The Frames and Ideographs of Water Reuse Policy Discourses

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THE FRAMES AND IDEOGRAPHS OF WATER REUSE POLICY DISCOURSES:

AN APPLICATION OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS AND TEXT ANALYTICS

Jeff M. Stevens

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of

The College for Design and Social Inquiry

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

December 2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am most especially indebted to my dissertation advisor, Professor Hugh Miller.

This dissertation would not have been possible but for his patience, support, encouragement, and guidance throughout my graduate studies at Florida Atlantic

University. I am sincerely grateful to my committee members, Drs. Alka Sapat and

Arthur Sementelli, for their willingness to serve on my committee, guidance, and support.

I also thank Drs. Gary Marshall of the University of Nebraska and Donald Cooper for

their early critiques and advice. And, I thank Drs. Khi Thai, Rosalyn Carter, and Barry

Rosson, for allowing me the extended time I needed to complete this dissertation.

Finally, I am grateful to my family for their unconditional love and enduring support

throughout this process. Most of all, I thank my wife Beverly for her personal sacrifices

and unrelenting patience during this project’s completion. This dissertation is dedicated

to her and our children, Emily and Shane.

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ABSTRACT

Author: Jeff M. Stevens

Title: The Frames and Ideographs of Water Reuse Policy Discourses: An Application of Narrative Analysis and Text Analytics

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Hugh T. Miller

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Year: 2012

This dissertation examines environmental policymaking as more of a symbol- driven ideological contest over meaning than a rationally discursive democratic process through two interpretive modes of research: historical narrative analysis and text analytic frame mapping. Both are applied to the case example of the city of San Diego’s controversial policy innovation of indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation, or

“toilet-to-tap,” as it became known through local news media. The dissertation develops its theoretical foundation from the literature pertaining to political communication in public policy, including the role of signs and symbols, media theory, frames and framing, and agenda setting. Electronic documents are used as data.

The narrative analysis traces the historical development of the policy innovation and a habitus of public acceptance of wastewater reuse. Emphasis is given to ideographs as policy symbols in political communication and policymaking, and the role of frames

iv and framing relative to extralinguistic forces that guide the trajectory of the policy innovation. The coherence of the qualitative thick description affirms the importance of interpretive history as a mode of policy research.

Text analytic frame mapping is undertaken as a linguistics-based approach to stakeholder analysis, and is conducted using two samples of newspaper articles pertaining to the San Diego case: editorials, letters to the editor, and op-ed columns (n = 77) and news articles and feature stories (n = 278). These analyses identify the discourse participants, key actors, and organizations represented in the discourse, their policy positions, the policy symbols and ideographs used in their policy arguments, and the frames that underlie or characterize their policy positions. The findings underscore the importance of the symbolic realm in environmental policymaking.

The dissertation finds the two modes of interpretive research can be applied complementarily to mitigate the limitations of each: Interpretive narrative analysis identifies causal relationships and allows for a critical rephrasal of the phenomena of interest, but patterns that transcend the details are not easily detected, whereas text analytic frame mapping identifies patterns and organizes large volumes of unstructured text, but oversimplifies the complexity of the policy narrative by reducing it to sets of classification measures.

THE FRAMES AND IDEOGRAPHS OF WATER REUSE POLICY DISCOURSES:

AN APPLICATION OF NARRATIVE ANALYSIS AND TEXT ANALYTICS

LIST OF TABLES ...... xi LIST OF FIGURES ...... xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Project Summary ...... 5 Interpretive-Historical Narrative Analysis...... 6 Text Analytic Frame Mapping...... 9 Academic Situatedness...... 11 Researcher Choices and Assumptions...... 13 Research Questions and Objectives ...... 14 Organization of the Remainder of the Study ...... 17 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 20 Theoretical Assumptions ...... 20 Media Dependency and Media Constructed Frames...... 22 Agenda Setting and Agenda Building ...... 26 Issue Salience Transfer...... 27 Attribute Salience Transfer...... 29 Media Influence in Agenda Setting and Agenda Building...... 31 Limitations on Media Influence...... 32 Ideographic Discourse ...... 34 Ideographic Discourse and Mediatization...... 36 Frames ...... 39 Frames as Structured Representations...... 40 Bateson’s Psychological Frame...... 43 Goffman’s Frame Analysis...... 44

Entman’s Framing Paradigm...... 47 Frames in Text...... 48 Cultural Frames...... 49 Framing and Reframing ...... 54 Manipulation of Issue Dimensions...... 57 Symbolic Arguments...... 59 Ideographic Symbols...... 60 Metaphors and Other Frame Indicators ...... 61 Frames as an Imprint of Power ...... 63 Review of Methods in the Framing Literature ...... 65 Interpretive Frame Analyses...... 68 Resolutive Frame Analyses...... 71 Linguistic frame analysis...... 72 Manual Holistic Frame Analysis...... 76 Wholly Quantitative Frame Analysis...... 78 Deductive Approach...... 82 Summary of Methods Surveyed...... 83 CHAPTER 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURES ...... 85 Case Selection ...... 86 Case Narrative Analysis ...... 88 Epistemic Framework...... 89 Materials and Procedures...... 91 Frame Mapping ...... 94 Local Newspaper as a Data Source ...... 96 Article Selection...... 102 CHAPTER 4: CASE NARRATIVE ...... 108 Preface to the Controversy ...... 109 The Concept of Planned Wastewater Reuse ...... 114 Organization of the Case History ...... 116 Epoch 1: 1944 to 1978 ...... 120 Water Supply Infrastructure and Agencies...... 120

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The San Diego Metropolitan Sewage System...... 125 Arizona vs. California Decision...... 127 Reverse Osmosis Pilot Project...... 128 Environmental Policies of the 1970s...... 130 Epoch 2: 1979 to 1991 ...... 132 Aquatic Treatment Project...... 132 Peripheral Canal Act and its Repeal...... 135 Wastewater Reclamation for Agricultural Use...... 140 Health Effects Study Initiated...... 142 The Murky Waters of Taste...... 143 Community Opposition: “Not In My Backyard”...... 144 Caltrans Celebration: “Good Enough to Drink”...... 146 Conference on Water Reclamation: “How Do You Sell It?” ...... 148 “Peace Plan” Water-Swap...... 150 Aqua II: Initial Virus Study Results...... 152 USA v. The City of San Diego ...... 154 Epoch 3: The 1992 to 1999 ...... 159 Consumers’ Alternative...... 159 Clean Water Act Waiver Granted...... 162 Water Repurification Project...... 165 The End of the Aquaculture Project...... 167 Quantification Settlement Agreement...... 169 “Toilet-to-Tap” and Opposition...... 170 Repurification Project Delayed...... 175 Grand Jury Report...... 176 Repurification Project Killed...... 178 Showers to Flowers...... 179 Epoch 4: 2000 to 2011...... 184 Repurification Still on the Sierra Club’s Agenda...... 184 BayKeeper v. City of San Diego...... 186 New Water Reuse Study...... 187

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Citizen Advisory Panel Recommendation...... 196 Association of Concerned Taxpayers v. City of San Diego...... 197 2005 “Strong Mayor” Election ...... 198 Sanders Opposes Reservoir Augmentation ...... 199 Reclaimed Water Mix-Up ...... 203 City Council Overrides Mayor’s Veto ...... 204 Media Debate Following the Council’s Reaffirmation...... 212 Carlsbad Desalination Project...... 216 Reissuance of the Clean Water Act Waiver...... 222 Water Rate Hike Controversy...... 227 Water Purification Demonstration Project...... 231 CHAPTER 5: A TEXT ANALYTIC FRAME MAPPING ...... 235 IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys...... 237 Preliminary Procedures...... 241 Selection of Linguistic Resources...... 242 Modifying Built-in Resources and Creating a Local Library...... 244 Category Building Techniques...... 246 Concept Root Derivation...... 247 Concept Inclusion...... 248 Semantic Network...... 249 Concept Co-occurrence...... 250 Category Visualization Tools...... 251 Category Web Graph...... 252 Category Bar Chart and Table...... 253 Frame Mapping Analysis ...... 255 The San Diego Union-Tribune: Opinion Section...... 255 The Union-Tribune Editorial Board...... 262 Letters to the Editor...... 272 Opposite the Editorial Page Column...... 295 The San Diego Union-Tribune: News Articles and Features Stories. .... 304 Identification of Organizations and Groups...... 305

Identification of Named Persons...... 311 Frames of Support and Opposition to Indirect Potable Reuse...... 317 Chapter Review and Summary of Findings ...... 330 Analysis of Discourse Participants from Opinion Items...... 331 Analysis of Union-Tribune Editorials...... 332 Analysis of Letters to the Editor...... 335 Analysis of Op-Ed Columns...... 337 Analysis of New Articles and Stories...... 339 Limitations of Frame Mapping...... 343 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...... 345 The Frame as a Theoretical Construct ...... 346 Reflections on Modes of Research...... 348 Setting the Water Reuse Policy Agenda ...... 350 Issue Salience and Attribute Salience...... 351 Media Agenda, Public Agenda, Policy Agenda...... 355 Public Discourse: Authentic or Ideographic? ...... 357 Exploring Power ...... 360 Importance or Benefit of the Research ...... 365 Practitioner Applications...... 367 Theoretical Relevance...... 368 APPENDIX A. OPINION ITEMS SAMPLED FOR FRAME MAPPING ...... 373 REFERENCES ...... 379

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Typology of Agenda Setting Studies ...... 28

Table 2. Newspaper Readers Compared with San Diego County Residents ...... 100

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Number of Articles Sampled by Year of Publication ...... 105

Figure 2. Opinions Library Synonym Definitions for “Disconnected” ...... 245

Figure 3. Example of a Tree-Structure with Corresponding Data for a Type ...... 246

Figure 4. Example of Categorization by Concept Root Derivation ...... 248

Figure 5. Example of Categorization by Concept Inclusion ...... 248

Figure 6. Example of Hierarchical Semantic Network Categorization ...... 250

Figure 7. Example of Concept Co-occurrence Categorization ...... 251

Figure 8. Example of Category Web Graph ...... 252

Figure 9. Example of Bar Chart and Table ...... 254

Figure 10. Discourse Participant Categorization for Opinion Section Items ...... 257

Figure 11. Key Actor Organizational Categories and Subcategories ...... 259

Figure 12. Actor Role Subcategories and Concepts ...... 260

Figure 13. Actor Role Subcategory Web Graph ...... 261

Figure 14. Most Frequent Concepts Extracted from Union-Tribune Editorials ...... 265

Figure 15. Indirect Potable Reuse Concepts from the Union-Tribune Editorials ...... 266

Figure 16. Overlapping Categories for “Toilet-to-Tap” in Editorials...... 267

Figure 17. “Toilet-to-Tap” Category Web Graph from Union-Tribune Editorials ...... 268

Figure 18. Letters to the Editor: Thematic Categories of Support and Opposition ...... 278

Figure 19. Letters to the Editor: Water Conservation as a Policy Alternative ...... 279

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Figure 20. Letters to the Editor: Water Conservation Synonyms ...... 280

Figure 21. Letters to the Editor: Support for Desalination ...... 281

Figure 22. Letters to the Editor: Other Opposition to IPR ...... 283

Figure 23. Letters to the Editor: Category Web Graph for Opposition to IPR ...... 286

Figure 24. Opposition Letters: Descriptors of Water Reuse ...... 287

Figure 25. Letters to the Editor: Safety Relative to Current Water Supply ...... 289

Figure 26. Letters to the Editor: Other Support for Indirect Potable Reuse ...... 292

Figure 27. Letters to the Editor: Category Web Graph for Support for IPR ...... 294

Figure 28. Op-Ed Column: Categories of Support and Opposition to Water Reuse ..... 298

Figure 29. Op-Ed Column: Support for Water Reuse within an Economics Frame ...... 300

Figure 31. Op-Ed Column: Water Reuse Support within a Drought Crisis Frame ...... 301

Figure 31. Op-Ed Column: Support for Water Reuse within a Safety Frame ...... 302

Figure 32. Op-Ed Column: Categories of Opposition to Water Reuse...... 304

Figure 33. News Articles: Community Groups ...... 308

Figure 34. News Articles: Research Institutions and Professional Groups ...... 309

Figure 35. News Articles: Local Government Entities ...... 310

Figure 36. News Articles: Categories of Named Persons ...... 312

Figure 37. News Articles: City Council Members...... 313

Figure 38. News Articles: Public Administrators ...... 314

Figure 39. News Articles: Representatives of Citizens’ Groups ...... 315

Figure 40. News Articles: Other Frequently Named Persons in the Text ...... 316

Figure 41. News Articles: Categories of Support and Opposition to IPR ...... 318

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Figure 42. News Articles: Elected Officials that Argue IPR is Too Expensive ...... 319

Figure 43. News Articles: Other “Cost” Arguments Against IPR ...... 320

Figure 44. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Unsafe ...... 321

Figure 45. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Politically Contentious ...... 322

Figure 46. News Articles: Arguments for IPR Policy Alternatives ...... 323

Figure 47. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Safe ...... 324

Figure 48. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Cost-Effective ...... 325

Figure 49. News Articles: Arguments that IPR Helps to Protect the Environment ...... 326

Figure 50. News Articles: Arguments that IPR Increases Self-reliance ...... 327

Figure 51. News Articles: Category Web Graph of by Person ...... 329

Figure 52. News Articles: Category Web Graph of by Bruce Reznik ...... 329

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Over the past thirty or so years, researchers and theorists dedicated to “improving knowledge of and in policy” (Lasswell, 1971, p.2) have developed into a branch community of policy scholarship that while eclectic in its offshoots is unified at its base in its shared desire for an authentic participatory model of democracy, its skepticism towards value-neutrality and objectivity in claims-making, and its unwillingness to accept the social Darwinist thesis that disparities in the human condition are a product of some natural order. The origins of this epistemic community trace to the antipositivist movements of the 1960s, during which scholars of the social sciences drew from philosophical and sociological critiques of positivism and the primacy given to scientific knowledge to develop an intellectual foundation for exposing the linkages between knowledge and political and economic interests (Lally & Preston, 1973).

For policy analysis, the 1970s was the starting point for the infusion of these critiques into scholarly discourse (Gomart & Hajer, 2003, p.44). The self-awareness of the politically biased normative values underlying the assumptions of analycentric policy analysis—including the goal of rational efficiency embedded in economic theory, statistical decision theory, and rational systems theory—led policy scholars to question whether policy analysis was a science or ideology (e.g., Heclo, 1972; Kramer, 1975;

Tribe, 1972). And during this time, throughout the social sciences, skepticism towards positivist dogma escalated to a level of epistemological agnosticism and methodological

1 relativism (Collins & Yearley, 1992) to where there is no longer a “single ‘correct’ reading of the ‘external world,’ no proper way in which facts must be selected and presented, and no arrangement, emplotment or presentation, or encodation that is uncontrovertibly correct or valid” (Manning, 1979, p.660).

In policy analysis, greater acceptance of this postpositivist perspective has since opened academic space for alternative modes of inquiry that are generally characterized as more qualitative, interpretive, perspectival, exploratory and open-ended, where the purpose is not to model policy solutions, but “stimulate the political processes of policy deliberation” (Fischer, 1998, p.130) through a critical assessment of policy-relevant knowledge in argumentation and public debate and an analysis of the values, beliefs, and mindsets underlying the policy positions of stakeholders (e.g., Douglas & Wildavsky,

1982; Dunn, 1994; Fischer & Forester, 1993; Majone, 1989; Nelson, 1987; Paris &

Reynolds, 1983; Schön & Rein, 1994; Stone, 2002). In contrast to traditional policy analysis as solution modeling (e.g., see Nagel, 1995), the external world and individual- level preferences are not taken for granted but, rather, are explored to account for where people get their images of the world and how these images shape their preferences

(Fischer, 1998, p.141).

Frame analysis is but one of these modes of policy inquiry. As a kind of narrative analysis or discourse analysis, frame analysis falls under the rubric of forensic

(Hoppe, 1999, 2010) or argumentative (Fischer & Forester, 1993) policy analysis, in which “the use of language, and the process of utilizing, mobilizing and weighing arguments and signs in the interpretation and praxis of policy making and analysis” is of

2 central interest (Gottweis, 2006, p.238). Policy scholar, William J. Ball (1995), traces argumentative policy analysis to Ralph Hambrick’s (1974) argument matrix, followed by

Frank Fischer’s (1980) value-oriented epistemology, which draws from “Stephen

Toulmin’s schematic for argumentative analysis, Paul Taylor’s hierarchy of value questions, and Jürgen Habermas’ perspective on political discourse” (p.3). Other policy theorists who contributed to the development of argumentative policy analysis include

John S. Nelson (1987) and Giandomenico Majone (1989), both of whom “bridge the fields of rhetoric and policy analysis, calling for a narrative form of policy analysis,” with a focus on “the role of argumentation in democratic processes” (Ball, 1995, p.4).

In frame analysis, the frame is generally taken as a cognitive device, a heuristic that relies on general themes and stereotypes to aid the interpretation of meanings and decision-making (e.g., Scheufele, 1999). It is also conceptualized as a cultural product

(e.g., Van Gorp, 2007) created from subjective and intersubjective values and beliefs that are negotiated through interaction, and nested in a dynamic cultural context that paradoxically both enables and limits policy learning and the generation of new ways of thinking (Schön & Rein, 1994). In this sense, the frame bridges human cognition and the broader social culture (Scheufele, 1999; Van Gorp, 2007). Frames are interpreted from narratives and discourses from key words and sentences, including stock phrases, stereotypes, metaphors, and slogans (Entman, 1993; Gamson & Lasch, 1983). But, frames are also indicated by other social constructions, such as visual images and other types of social artifacts (e.g., Hajer, 2003), and through other expressions, including human behaviors and social situations (Goffman, 1974/1986).

When conducted as an interpretive-historical approach to policy analysis, as with

certain approaches to narrative analysis (e.g., Roe, 1994) and discourse analysis (e.g.,

Litfin, 1994), frame analysis can be thought of as a rapprochement between literary

theory and phenomenologically-based sociology, where interpretive evaluations made

through various researcher comparisons and inferences are expressed through stories—

narratives with a standard stock of story elements, such as actants (heroes, villains, victims and other character types), themes, plots, settings, conflict, and (often, but not always) resolution (e.g., as per Stone, 2002). Methodologically, such studies often rely on an analysis of policy narratives, in which the conceptualizations of problem definitions are mapped to the cognitive frames of antagonists engaged in a policy dilemma, and explicated through researcher interpretation to “show how the same policy terms are given meaning in different and conflicting ways” (Van Eeten, 2006, p.252).

This is exemplified in the case studies presented in Donald Schön and Martin Rein’s

(1994) Frame Reflection, in which the narrative storytelling of intractable policy controversies is combined with an interpretative account of the rhetorical-, policy-, and action-oriented frames of individuals and organizations, and the metacultural frames that underlie the metaphors that shape human perception. The value of the policy narrative is that “stories meeting certain characteristics (truth, richness, consistency, congruency, and unity) can integrate necessary considerations, explain the development of current dilemmas, and point the way to resolutions” (Kaplan, 1986, p.761)

However, “not all policy analyses need to be in the narrative form—some

analyses appropriately make tenseless arguments for particular principles” (Kaplan, 1986,

4 p.761). And, when conducted through a more resolutive mode of inquiry, frame analysis can be thought of as a special application of discourse analysis or content analysis, with methodologies that provide for varying degrees of researcher interpretation, depending on the researcher’s epistemological orientation and intent. Interpretive-resolutive research conducted from a critical perspective often seeks to illuminate latent ideologies and the connotative meanings of signs and symbols, such as with critical discourse analysis (e.g.,

Fairclough, 1995) and ideograph analyses (e.g., Clarke, 1999, 2002; Cloud, 2004; Miller

& Fox, 2007; Miller, 2012). In contrast, frame analysis conducted from an empiricist perspective, as with quantitative content analysis, tends to focus on manifest content, and applies standard sets of rules intended to reduce researcher subjectivity and allow for replicability of results (George, 2009).

Project Summary

In this dissertation, I explore two methods for conducting frame analysis: a case narrative approach that incorporates frame-critical/frame-reflective analysis, loosely based on Schön and Rein’s (1994) epistemology for reconstructing fragmented policy stories into a larger policy dialectic; and a text analytic approach to frame mapping intended as a linguistics-based alternative to statistical frame mapping with cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling (i.e., Miller & Riechert, 2001a, 2001b). The application of the two methods is intended to address the strengths and limitations of each: Qualitative description produces a “thorough treatment of a given issue but [may] not help reduce the mass of information to meaningful and readily demonstrable themes…thick description can go on and on without producing patterns that transcend the

5 particulars” (Reese, 2001, p.8). However, the danger of the resolutive approaches, such as frame mapping, is “over simplification, reducing a complex structure to a set of classifying measures” (Reese, 2001, p.8). I propose the two modalities can be applied in a way that complementarily overcomes these limitations.

In this project summary section I next introduce my case narrative approach and provide an overview of my application of text analytics for the purpose of frame mapping. This brief introduction is followed by discussions on academic situatedness and researcher choices and assumptions. These discussions are provided to demonstrate researcher reflexivity (as per Watt, 2007) and contextualize this dissertation within the broader domain of interpretive policy analysis (e.g., as per Yanow, 2000). The section on researcher choices and assumptions is followed by research questions, an outline of the objectives of the dissertation, and then a discussion on the presumed importance and benefits of the research with regard to both practitioner applications and the study’s theoretical relevance. This first chapter concludes with an outline of the organization of the remainder of the dissertation.

Interpretive-Historical Narrative Analysis.

Similar in spirit to Schön and Rein’s (1994) case study approach in Frame

Reflection, frame analysis is employed in this dissertation as an interpretive-historical approach to analysis for understanding the unfolding of events, “how people fight over visions of the public or community interest…[and for]…emphasizing discourse as a creative and valuable feature of social existence” (Fischer, 1998, p.141). This requires a recapitulation of the policy narrative in which the reconstruction allows for a fuller

comprehension of the contextual features of the policy issue, such as its boundaries

(temporal, political, geographic, or otherwise); the actors, institutions, and interpretive

communities involved; the evaluative dimensions of their policy arguments; and the

actions and events within and external to the policy arena that influence the trajectory of

a policy innovation.

As a notable departure from Schön and Rein’s (1994) epistemology, I emphasize media theory as being essential to understanding the policy process, with emphasis given to the socially shared reality as presented through general audience media. The focus on mass media is predicated on its presumed potential to influence public opinion and the civic agenda, as established in the agenda-setting literature (e.g., McCombs & Reynolds,

2009, pp.2-5). That is, because various interests compete for media frames and the media have a pervasive influence in shaping how policy issues are perceived by the public, frame analysis has important implications for political communication (Entman, 1993, p.53). The study of public policy, therefore, warrants “an examination of the role of the media in legitimizing issues, framing debates, and even altering outcomes” (Rozell, 2003, p.vii).

A critical lens applied to my interpretive framework is based on two main premises that respectively relate to the frames of individual actors and institutions as manifest in text and the way such frames can tacitly relate to the construction of cultural frames. The first is summarized in media theorist Robert Entman’s (1993) statement that frame invoked by the news “is really the imprint of power – it registers the identity of actors or interests that competed to dominate the text” (p.53). The questions of whose

7 power is imprinted, how it is applied, and the interests ultimately served can be answered by mapping the topography of the frames in media discourses according to their respective actors and institutions. The second premise is with regard to myth-making nature of frames, and their ability to construct cultural frames. This relates to communication theorist James Tankard’s (2001) assertion that “much of the power of framing comes from its ability to define the terms of a debate without the audience realizing it is taking place” (p.97). In particular, I’m concerned with the process of what

Roland Barthes (1972/1984) termed naturalization, the ability of frames to “transform history into nature” (p.129). The connection between framing and naturalization is made by Fischer (2003), who argues that “most fundamental to discursive interactions is the question of how a particular framing of an issue can bestow the appearance of problematic on some features of a discussion while others seem proper and fixed” (p.85).

Through the use of language and images, frames can represent social phenomena that are artificial and contingent as natural and eternal (Barthes, 1972/1984). That is, because the connection between expressions and their meanings is cultural and context dependent,

“modes of perception-interpretation, in turn, may be institutionalized and become unexamined connections” (Manning, 2009, p.573). This has been further theorized by

Hugh T. Miller (2012) who applies Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to describe the

“production of the commonsense world” through continuous reinforcements…[that] regularize, normalize, and naturalize customs and conventional ways of going about things” (p.71).

The understanding of naturalization, the cultivation of a particular habitus through myth-making frames, is achieved through the connection of the frame or mythical schema to history, “to explain how it corresponds to the interests of a definite society” (Barthes,

1972/1984, p.128). This is somewhat analogous, to what policy analyst, Emery Roe

(1994), describes as a narrative analysis in which the “analyst compares two sets of narratives (stories on one hand, and nonstories or counterstories on the other) in order to generate a metanarrative ‘told’ by comparison” (p.4). Media theorist, George Gerber

(1972, p.44), describes the nonstory or counterfactual, when deliberately omitted from the discourse, as a form of symbolic annihilation. In order to understand naturalization, there is always the nonstory to consider. This requires reflection as to the meaning that underlies the frame and its intended effect (e.g., Tuchman, 1978a).

Text Analytic Frame Mapping.

The second method applied in this dissertation is conducted through an interpretive-resolutive mode of inquiry, and draws inspiration from quantitative approaches to “frame mapping” (i.e., Miller & Riechert, 2001a, 2001b). The criticism towards the statistical approach to frame mapping is that such methods involve highly rigid techniques (Koenig, 2004) that better identifies a topic than its frame (Carragee &

Roefs, 2004) since the frequency of words is not necessarily an indicator of whether they are central to the meaning of a text (Hertog & McLeod, 2001). Statistics-based approaches to text analysis have been criticized for “treating text as a ‘bag of words,’ rather than incorporating the structure and meaning of language in the analysis” (IBM,

2010, p.3).

Recent advances in computational linguistics have extended the potential for

frame mapping beyond the statistics-based approach. Through natural language processing with algorithms designed to detect language patterns called n-grams (Cavnar

& Trenkle, 1994) and dictionaries containing the base forms of terms, and their part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.), text analytics software allows the researcher to identify, organize, and connect key frame elements from a narrative discourse. This

would include the identification of organizations, events, actors their expressed

sentiment, and notable rhetorical tropes. Text analytics also provides a reliable

alternative to computer assisted qualitative analyses involving manual researcher coding,

which is limited by the researcher in its reliability for identifying relationships or trends

in large volumes of text spanning many documents (Matthes & Kohring, 2008).

A hypothesized possibility is the application of text analytics to identify and map

ideographs as key frame signification devices. The ideograph, as a symbol that links rhetoric to ideology, was first proposed by rhetorical theorist, Michael Calvin McGee

(1980):

An ideograph is an ordinary term found in political discourse. It is a higher-order abstraction representing a collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill-defined normative goal. It warrants the use of power, excuses behavior and belief, which might otherwise be perceived as eccentric or antisocial, and guides behavior and belief into channels easily recognized by a community as acceptable and laudable. (p.15)

Since McGee’s seminal work, the concept of the ideograph has since been further developed and adapted to the study of political communication and public policy (e.g.,

Clarke, 1999, 2002; Cloud, 2004; Miller & Fox, 2007). Most recently, Hugh T. Miller

(2012), defined the ideograph as “symbolic material that brings into view a constellation

10 of images, emotions, values, understanding, connotations, and facts” (p.3). In essence, an ideograph can be any sign or symbol where “connotation is an integral part of the meaning-building process” (Miller, 2012, p.5). The ideograph is therefore a rhetorical trope that functions similar to metonymy in that the connotations and associations with values and emotions contiguously inform the meaning of the symbol.

The use of text analytic software is also predicted to be useful for extracting from unstructured text the named entities involved in a policy narrative, such as actors and organizations, and for linking them to their expressed policy positions and sentiment, and key framing devices such rhetorical tropes, including ideographs. It may be that text analytic frame mapping provides for only a superficial analysis, limited to organizing and summarizing textual data, distilling from it what the researcher determines is important.

If so, its application to frame-critical/frame-reflective analyses may be limited to serving a principally indexical function, directing the researcher to phenomena that warrant further investigation. An evaluative judgment as to efficacy of a text analytic frame mapping approach to frame analysis will be made at the study’s conclusion.

Academic Situatedness.

Academic communities can be thought of as epistemic- (Haas, 1992) or interpretive- (Fish, 1980; Yanow, 2000) communities with specialized reference patterns,

“disciplinary matrices” of symbolic generalizations, metaphysical presumptions, values, and exemplars (i.e., as per Kuhn, 1996, pp.182-191). These reference patterns create a certain socio-cultural situatedness for their constituent members by framing their “ability to engage in acts of communication and participate in social practices and ‘language

games’ within a community” (Zlatev, 2001, p.161). In academia the “unnatural

constraint” of the “departmental structure of the contemporary university” often imposes

disciplinary limitations (deLeon & Martell, 2003, p.939-940). A relevant example is that

of public policy and administration. Scholars of public policy with an emphasis on

political processes broadly constitute an epistemic- or interpretive community that is

fairly distinct from that of public administration scholars whose interests are principally

with regard to public management and organization theory. As Lawrence E. Lynn (1996)

notes, “scholars in the two largest academic provinces, public policy and administration,

have tended to be—there is no better word for it—provincial. Sociologically, they

fraternize or collaborate infrequently, and intellectually they cite each other’s work

irregularly” (cited in Kettl, 2002, p.20). One of the reasons for this schism is perhaps the

longstanding idea of a politics-administration dichotomy in which policy is considered

part of the political process, separate from its administration. Public administration

theorists, Gary M. Woller and Kelly D. Patterson (1997) describe this divide as a “tug-of-

war” between the “bureaucratic ethos” and “democratic ethos” in public administration.

However, the “complementarity of politics and administration,” as James Svara (1999),

puts it, supports the idea of “reciprocity of influence in both policymaking and

administration” between politicians and administrators, who “together form a whole in

democratic governance” (p.678). This provides a warrant for the study of politics and

policymaking under the broader rubric of public administration.

A common transdisciplinary fault-line across the social sciences seems to be between positivism and its epistemological others (Steinmetz, 2005), such as between

rational choice theorists (e.g., as per Heckathorn, 2001) and those who promote

interpretive, literary, reflexive, value-critical alternatives to inquiry (e.g., as discussed in

Smith & Larimer, 2009). Policy scholars that employ qualitative, interpretive methods

often do so largely on normative grounds (e.g., deLeon, 1995; Dunn, 1994, pp.110-112;

Durning, 1993; Dryzek, 1993; Laird, 1993; Fischer, 1993, 1998, 2003; Hampton, 2004;

Thompson, 2001). Historically, there has been little integration across disciplinary

cliques, even among those share similar ontological views of reality and

epistemologically draw their water from the same sources. But, just as rational choice

increasingly presents an interdisciplinary exception (e.g., as per Heckathorn, 2001), so

does the so-called “framing paradigm” (e.g., Entman, 1993). Media communications

theorist, Baldwin Van Gorp (2007), notes that theories of frames and framing are applied

in cognitive psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, linguistics, social-

movements research, policy research, and various types of communications research, and

contends that “all these research traditions are expressions of a strong belief in the research potential of the framing concept” (p.60). This transdisciplinary pedigree warrants a less parochial view of what constitutes an epistemic community, and an open- mind towards integrating ideas from other academic fields for the study of public policy.

The references on framing and frame analysis cited in this dissertation are illustrative of the integration of framing theory throughout the social sciences.

Researcher Choices and Assumptions.

Although the references are cited in this dissertation derive from the integration of frame analysis and framing theory across social science disciplines, as a researcher I’ve

13 made certain choices throughout this process. These are choices that are largely based on my own ontological and epistemological assumptions and personal—and perhaps idiosyncratic—preferences. The combination of my personal experiences, values and

(albeit limited) exposure to structuralism, poststructuralism, critical theory, semiotics, and postmodernism (and, admittedly, rudimentary grasp of these traditions of thought) has instilled within me certain interests and a particular research orientation that is applied in this dissertation. My professional experience of having worked for several years in state government has inscribed (see Miller, 2012) in me the belief that the historical-material dimensions of power would be significant in determining the trajectory of a policy innovation and warrant attention in an analysis of public policy, but so does a conceptualization of discourse as a vector of power and the construction of social reality. Certainly, economic power has been associated with influence and persuasion, such as with the correlation between political and financial strength during a congressional campaign (e.g., Jacobson, 1978; Banaian & Luksetich, 1991). Yet, the salience of a policy argument and its undergirding values cannot be reduced to material power: “the ability to make claims on dominant norms and values represents an important power resource not reducible to other nondiscursive resources…Virtuosity in constructing arguments and justifications is a real source of power” (Lynch, 1999, p.266).

Research Questions and Objectives

What is the value of text analytic frame mapping as a tool for interpretive policy analysis relative to interpretive-historical narrative analysis? Which method better identifies the frame and ideographs of the discourse and whose imprint of power is

14 residual in media texts, how is it applied, and whose interests are served? These questions are answered using an instrumental case study concerning the city of San

Diego’s controversial proposal to reclaim 100% of its wastewater and discharge the highly treated effluent into its city’s second largest drinking water reservoir. This indirect potable reuse (IPR) project, which has been in development since the late 1960s, became an intractable policy controversy during the 1990s, with local media and grandstanding politicians attaching their ideographic political symbols to the controversy.

The current study, with its emphasis on media-constructed social reality, draws inspiration from, but is intended as an alternative to, the traditional community studies in the vein of Robert Dahl, Edward Banfield, and others who “attempted to elucidate the distribution of power through examining actual decision-making” (Heclo, 1972, p.90).

In this dissertation, I discuss frames and framing as a theoretical paradigm for argumentative policy analysis and apply two approaches to an interpretive analysis of the frames that characterize this mediatized debate. These include an interpretive-historical mode of analysis that borrows its epistemic framework from Schön and Rein’s (1994) policy dialectic, and a text analytic approach to frame mapping that incorporates IBM®

SPSS® Text Analytics software to identify and connect actors and organizations, and link these actants with policy arguments, ideographic symbols, expressed sentiment and ostensible beliefs.

The policy dialectic, as applied in this dissertation, is a specific application of narrative analysis for studying factors contributing to a policy’s trajectory. The emphasis on argumentation strategies and the ways in which competing interests construct social

reality when negotiating specific policy issues is supplemented with attention to the perceived severity of the problem, institutional factors, interest groups, the availability of material resources, and other contextual determinants, including stakeholder involvement. These are factors that have previously been identified as determinants of the adoption of environmental policy innovations (e.g., Sapat, 2004). Additionally, the analysis of frame attributes and the media attention in public discourses over time should enable a better understanding how issues emerge and develop, and how attitudes toward the problem may have changed.

The lack of a unified theory of frames and framing has been characterized as problematic by some scholars. Entman (1993), for example, argues that the use of casual definitions of framing, where “much is left to the assumed tacit understanding of reader and researcher” (p.52) has resulted in a “fractured paradigm” of framing studies. The concepts of frames and framing are central to this study, and as such require theoretical structure and operational definitions. A workable theory of frames is developed for these purposes through a review of selected literature. In this dissertation I develop the

“frame” as a theoretical construct, and employ a case example to demonstrate how narrative analysis and text analytic frame mapping can be applied to interpret frames and ideographic policy symbols, and also identify efforts towards naturalization or the development of a particular habitus, in addition to identifying key actors and their institutions and coalitions, and connecting these entities to their stated beliefs. The combination of these modes of research can serve as an interpretive lens for the study of policy debate. Framing analysis is used to identify and examine the frames that dominate

the text, what they imply, whose agenda they serve, and how these frames construct a

social reality. Using data from the case example, an evaluative judgment is made as to

where the public discourses fall along a continuum anchored by the ideal of deliberative

democracy on one end and the bête noire of an ideographic discourse devoid of

authenticity on the other.

Organization of the Remainder of the Study

Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature and begins with a discussion of the

theoretical assumptions concerning the interrelatedness between aspects of human

cognition and media dependency theory. This is followed by a discussion on agenda

setting theory and the role of the media in the policy process, which leads to an overview

of ideographs and ideographic discourse. Next, the “framing paradigm” (Entman, 1993)

is explored with a review of the concept of frames and framing as applied by theorists across the social sciences. Chapter 2 concludes with a review of the modes of research applied in various types of frame analytic studies.

Chapter 3 presents and overview of Schön and Rein’s (1994) epistemic framework for a frame-critical/frame-reflective policy dialectic as applied to the case narrative in Chapter 4. This is followed by a review of the materials and procedures employed. The next section is an overview of linguistics-based frame mapping using text analytics software with a discussion on the use of a local newspaper as a data source, the article selection and data collection process, and an a description of the sample of articles collected.

Chapter 4 is the case narrative. This chapter begins with a preface to the “toilet-

to-tap” controversy, a discussion on planned water reuse, and an overview of the organization of the case history, which is divided into four time periods. Next, the case narrative highlights the historical events related to wastewater reclamation and planned water reuse, with attention given to media coverage and the frames and ideographs that characterize the discourse.

Chapter 5 is the text analytic approach to frame-mapping. This chapter begins with an overview of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, its functionality and how it was applied in this dissertation. This is followed by analyses of editorials, letters to the editor, and op-ed columns, and a separate analysis of news articles and feature stories related to the “toilet-to-tap” policy controversy and the development of the city of San

Diego’s planned water reuse policies. The chapter concludes with a review of the analyses and a summary of the findings.

Chapter 6 is the study’s conclusion. This chapter addresses the degree to which the study’s research questions were answered and its research objectives met. The conclusion includes a discussion on the “frame” as a theoretical construct and its value as a research construct for future inquiry; a discussion of the study as it relates to agenda setting research and the role of litigation in setting the environmental policy agenda; a discussion of importance of the symbolic realm in democratic policy discourse, and the degree of authenticity or, rather, the lack of authenticity in the policy discourses reviewed in the case study; a discussion on the differences between the interpretive-resolutive mode of research provided through text analytics approach to frame-mapping and the

18 interpretive-regressive mode of analysis exemplified in the case narrative analysis. The chapter concludes with a section exploring power and agency, as imprinted in media texts and the case narrative.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Entman (1993) notes that the concept of framing offers a way to describe the

power of a communicating text and that the “analysis of frames illuminates the precise

way in which influence over a human consciousness is exerted by the transfer (or

communication) of information” (pp.51-52). Framing is theorized as a lens for analyzing

the power and hegemony applied through technologies of politics; the ways in which

social realities are negotiated, and heresthetically constructed; and the role of the press as

an interlocutor in the policy process. According to Teun van Dijk (1998), the style,

rhetoric and meaning of texts can be examined for “strategies that aim at the concealment

of social power relations, for instance by playing down, leaving implicit or understating

responsible agency of powerful social actors in the events represented in the text”

(p.250). An analysis of frames illustrates “the precise way influence over a human

consciousness is exerted by the transfer (or communication) of information” (Entman,

1993, p.52). Specifically, an analysis of frame attributes and the amount of media attention in public discourse over time should enable a better understanding how issues emerge and develop, and how attitudes toward the problem may have changed over time.

Theoretical Assumptions

In this section I discuss four interrelated antecedent theoretical assumptions that undergird the current study, and perhaps support constructionist framing research in general. These theoretical antecedent assumptions can be summarized as (a) the idea of

Walter Lippmann’s (1922) conceptualization of a pseudo-environment as distinct from

the real environment; (b) Erving Goffman’s (1974/1986) concept of cognitive frames that

enable the organization of experiences; (c) Albert Bandura’s (2009) social cognitive theory as it relates to symbolic modeling; and (d) Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin

DeFleur’s (1976) media dependency theory.

The first assumption relates somewhat to the Kantian distinction between things as they are and things as they appear to us (e.g., see Greenberg, 2001). The assumption is that, individually and socially, the reality we experience is an interpreted reality, and there is very often at least some difference between the real environment and the subjective realities consisting of mental representations and beliefs about the real environment, what Lippmann (1922) referred to as a pseudo-environment. The basic idea

is that because “the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting

for direct acquaintance…we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model so we can manage

it” (Lippmann, 1922, p.16). Lippmann’s idea of an individual-level pseudo-environment can be viewed as the building block for socially-constructed intersubjectivity, the notion that knowledge of the world is “generated socially, is dependent upon communication, and is constituted by meanings that are shared” (Gutenschwager, 2004, p.26).

The assumption that we have subjective and intersubjective realities ties to the idea that the models of reality we construct for ourselves are achieved through “schemata of interpretation,” which Goffman (1974/1986, p.21) called frameworks or frames.

Conceptually, the cognitive frame substitutes for a variety of familiar ideas related to our

“underlying structures of belief, perception, and appreciation” (Schön & Rein, 1994,

p.23). Our frames of mind can be thought of as an adaptive toolbox (Gigerenzer, 2001),

or ordering device (Hajer & Laws, 2008) for creating mental models of the environment.

Such frames have certain inherent vulnerabilities (Goffman, 1974/1986) that also impose

limitations on human rationality (Simon, 1995; Jones, 1994). The “corpus of cautionary

tales, games, riddles, experiments, newsy stories, and other scenarios” (Goffman,

1974/1986, p.563) we carry in our heads results in “mind-sets” and “habits of attention”

that lead us to define problems and solutions in familiar ways (Freeman, 2006, p.382).

These stereotypes (Lippmann, 1922) and scripted courses of action (Abelson, 1981)

reflect a cognitive frugality that allows us to be fairly easily guided toward making

certain choices, which we might not otherwise have, simply by shifting the decision

frame from one evaluative dimension to another (Tversky & Kahneman, 2006). But a

key emphasis, noted by Lippmann (1922), is that groups with different access to

information will have different shared realities. That is, there can be multiple social

realities, an idea theoretically important to the study of democratic pluralism and group

conflict theory in that “interest groups and policy constituencies…make different

interpretations of the way things are, and support different courses of action concerning

what is to be done, by whom and how to do it” (Rein & Schön, 1993, p.147).

Media Dependency and Media Constructed Frames.

The third assumption and fourth assumption are interrelated such that I’ve

conflated them under one subheading relating to media dependency and the media’s role in constructing frames. These assumptions are premised by a question posed by Frank

Fischer and John Forester (1993, p.1): “What if our language does not simply mirror or

picture the world, but instead profoundly shapes our view of it in the first place?” The position suggested by Hans Georg Gadamer, which taken as representative of hermeneutic philosophy, is that the “meaning of a text is determined by an interaction between the intentions of the author and the interpretations of the reader, both of which are embedded in their respective historical contexts” (Morçöl, 2005, p.218).

The role of the media in the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann,

1966/1991) is somewhat analogous to what sociologist Anthony Giddens (1983) referred to as a double hermeneutic. Part of Giddens’ critique of positivism is that scientific interpretations of the “objective world” subsequently transfer back to the “subjective world” in the form of “‘self-fulfilling’ or ‘self-denying prophecies” (1983, p.13).

Likewise, in media discourses, “language realizes a world, in the double sense of apprehending and producing it” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991, p.153). According to cultural sociologist, Gaye Tuchman (1978b), who defines frames in terms of storytelling in the form of a “news story frame,” social reality is constructed through media accounts in which “certain pieces of information are selected and put together within the specific genre constraints of a news story” (cited in Miller, Andsager & Riechert, 1998, p.314).

Through complex processes of interpretation, “the reader then forms an impression of the news stories’ central theme/issue and attitudes toward the actors involved (p.314). This means that the media are thought of as “not simply a reflector or communication channel” (Putnam, 2002, p.119). Rather, general audience media provide a strong gauge of public opinion because “media discourse dominates the larger issue culture, both reflecting it and contributing to its creation” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3).

Social cognitive theory suggests that our frames of mind, and the cognitive and

affective knowledge they maintain, are the result of a mix of direct personal experiences, empirical observations and “packaged” information communicated to us through various media systems (Bandura, 2009). The connection between social cognitive theory and media dependency theory is that as the social world becomes increasingly complex we, in turn, become increasingly dependent on media systems for information external to our personal lives in order to function in that world (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976; Ball-

Rokeach, 1985). The media’s influence on how we perceive reality displaces perceptions that, in an earlier time, would have been achieved through direct experiences and firsthand observational learning (Marcuse, 1964/2012). This is especially the case during crises, conflicts, and periods of change (Nimmo & Combs, 1990). The implication is that

“a vast amount of information about human values, styles of thinking and behavior patterns gained from the extensive modeling in the symbolic environment of the mass media” (Bandura, 2009, p.98). That is, culturally shared intersubjective perceptions of reality are largely constructed through the circulation of frames through mass media

(Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes & Sasson, 1992).

Although people access mass media for a variety uses, including entertainment

(e.g., Katz, Blumler & Gurevitch, 1974), there is a dependency in which the public must rely on mass media to connect the political world to their personal lived experiences; “the press alone describes and interprets the events of public life that few citizens experience directly” (Kinder, 1998, p.822). As G. Ray Funkhouser (1973) noted: “The news media are our only way of knowing, at the time, what is happening in the world outside our

immediate experience” (p.74). General audience media are, therefore, more than

economic systems that provide entertainment, they are “information systems vitally

involved in the maintenance, change, and conflict processes at the societal as well as the

group and individual levels of social action” (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976, p.5). As the public increasingly depends on the media to see outside of their personal lives, the predicted effects are believed to be affective, behavioral, and cognitive (Ball-Rokeach &

DeFleur, 1976). With regard to the latter, dependency on the media for information

establishes the media as an interlocutor in the policy process, and particularly with regard

to the setting of policy agendas.

An important implication of this phenomenon, for better or for worse, is the

power afforded to the media as an interlocutor in political processes (c.f., Freedman,

2008; Keane, 1991). Democratic theory assumes citizens are capable of conducting

informed policy discourse (Miller & Fox, 2007, p.x). But, instead of direct experiences

and face-to-face conversation serving as the most important vehicle for the construction

and maintenance of social reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991), our intersubjective

understanding of the world is largely media-produced and media-supplied (Croteau,

Hoynes & Milan, 2011). In suggesting issue definitions and policy alternatives, the

media are “an instrument of power” (Schattschneider, 1960, p.68). As Edelman (1993)

writes, “a kaleidoscope of potential realities” can be manipulated by “altering the ways in

which observations are framed and categorized” (p.231). Such schemes are linked to

political power, and, as such, are “typically driven by the dominant elite’s ideology and

prejudice” (Edelman, 1993, p.231). This has generated significant interest in agenda-

25 setting research and other media-effects and media-power studies (e.g., Graber, 2009;

Iyengar & Kinder, 1987/1995; McCombs, 2004; Rozell, 2003).

Agenda Setting and Agenda Building

Agenda-setting relates to the stream of research principally concerned with the effects of media framing on public opinion, where the public agenda is “a general set of political controversies that will be viewed at any point in time as falling within the range of legitimate concerns meriting the attention of the polity” (Cobb & Elder, 1983, p.14).

That is, agenda-setting theory is predicated on the idea that the media play an important part in shaping political reality because the information communicated through mass media is often the only connection between the public and politics. As Lang and Lang

(1966) note, “the mass media force attention to certain issues…They are constantly presenting objects suggesting what individuals in the mass should think about, know about, have feelings about” (p.466).

Agenda setting media-effects studies often examine elite-driven framing effects relative to the degree to which “individuals construct their own meanings and make sense of politics on their own terms” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3). With print news media, for example, the public “learns not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position” (McCombs & Shaw, 1972, p.176). Elizabeth Shanahan and colleagues concluded from their narrative analysis of newspaper articles that “media accounts are generally policy stories, suggesting that the media’s role is more of a contributor than a

conduit in the policy change process” (Shanahan, McBeth, Hathaway & Arnell, 2008,

p.115).

The model presented by James Dearing and Everett Rogers (1992) suggests that

“the (a) media agenda influences (b) the public agenda, which may in turn influence (c)

the policy agenda” (p.22). Dearing and Rogers (1992) note that the correlation of

attention to certain issues at the same time by the media, the public, and policymakers

was first observed by Harold Lasswell (1948), and later taken up by Maxwell McCombs

and Donald Shaw (1972) as the “agenda setting function of the mass media” (p.12).

Agenda-setting theory considers media effects on two levels: issue salience transfer, and attribute salience transfer (McCombs & Reynolds, 2009).

Issue Salience Transfer.

The first level of agenda setting is issue salience transfer, the idea that “the degree of emphasis placed on the issues in the news influences the priority accorded to those issues by the public” (McCombs, 2004, p.68). That is, the idea that people with similar exposure to issues presented through the media will place similar importance on those issues. For example, Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder (1987/1995), find that:

Americans’ views of society and nation are powerfully shaped by the stories that appear on the evening news…people who were shown network broadcasts edited to draw attention to a particular problem assigned greater importance to that problem… [and]…believed government should do more about it. (p.296)

Because citizens look to the media to see what is going on outside of their immediate lived experience, the media, through story placement and repeated coverage, is able to transfer the salience of political issues to their audience.

Since the seminal study by McCombs and Shaw (1972), the literature on agenda has accumulated well over 425 empirical studies across a diversity of policy issues

(McCombs & Reynolds, 2009, p.2). McCombs and Reynolds (2009) present a typology in which the corpus of these agenda-setting studies is organized along two dimensions.

The first is with regard to whether the entire media agenda, such as the content of an

entire newspaper, for example, was the subject of inquiry, or whether the investigation

was limited to a particular agenda item, a single issue. The second identifies whether the

study used aggregate population measures, such as opinion polls, or individual measures,

such as volunteer subjects in a laboratory setting. The cross-product is four research perspectives (see Table 1), each of which “makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of agenda setting (McCombs & Reynolds, 2009, p.6).

Table 1. Typology of Agenda Setting Studies

Scope of Agenda Public Agenda Perspective Items Measurement I. Competition: Examines array of issues competing Aggregate Population Entire Agenda for positions on the agenda Measures

II. Automation: Examines the degree to which an Entire Agenda Individual Measures individual reproduces the agenda of the media.

III. Natural History: Examines the degree of correspondence between the media agenda and the Aggregate Population Individual Item public agenda in the rise and fall of a single item Measures over time.

IV: Cognitive Portrait: Experimental design studies in which the salience of a single issue is measured Individual Item Individual Measures before and after exposure to media, and the amount of exposure is controlled.

Note. This table was developed from the discussion provided in McCombs and Reynolds (2009, p.5).

Attribute Salience Transfer.

Once an issue is primed in social consciousness, issue framing becomes a second-

level of agenda setting. That is, the second level of agenda setting is attribute salience

transfer, which emphasizes the characteristics and properties that describe the agenda

(McCombs & Reynolds, 2009). According to McCombs and Estrada (1997):

How news frames affect public opinion is the emerging second-level of agenda setting. The first level is the transmission of object salience. The second level is the transmission of attribute salience. Attribute salience refers to the multitude of ways political elites or media sources can choose to shape the presentation of an issue; as such, the second level of agenda setting implicitly draws upon theories of media framing. (p.240)

For the most part, the primary focus of agenda-setting studies conducted before the mid-

1990s is with regard to first-level agenda setting, or issue salience transfer. However,

beginning in the 1990s, agenda setting research was criticized as having an issue-centered bias (e.g., Pan & Kosicki, 1993). Agenda setting research “had not examined the

substance of an issue, but dealt only with the shell of the topic” (Takeshita, 1997). This

led to sustained interest in attribute salience transfer as a second-level of agenda setting

(e.g., Ghanem, 1997; McCombs & Estrada, 1997; McCombs, Lopez-Escobar & Llamas,

2000; Takeshita, 1997). It wasn’t until more recently, however, that the convergence of agenda setting and framing, as a unified paradigm, was made explicit (i.e., McCombs &

Ghanem, 2001, p.67-82). As McCombs and Reynolds (2009) explain:

Both framing and attribute agenda setting call attention to the perspectives used by communicators and their audiences to picture topics in the daily news. However, because of the large number of definitions for framing, comparisons of the two approaches range from substantial overlap to total dissimilarity. Recent research has identified two types of frames, aspects and central themes, that do greatly resemble attribute agendas. (p.7)

However, salience transfer, or media effects, studies that deal with agenda setting, framing, or the closely related concept of priming, “drawing attention to some aspects of political life at the expense of others” (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987/1995, p.298), treat the frame in text as an exogenous variable. In contrast, the concept of frame building, the way social forces organize the frames in a media package (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987,

1989) is theoretically similar to agenda building, or what Cobb and Elder (1971) refer to as “problem-setting.” This approach examines the frame as an endogenous variable by focusing on the way in which issues are socially constructed through general audience media.

This distinction between agenda setting and agenda building is adopted by Dan

Berkowitz (1994, pp.83-84). For clarity, Berkowitz suggests agenda setting considers

“the effect of mass media content on the public’s perception of a news agenda,” and that the study of policymaker’s perceptions, shaped by the media agenda and other forces such as opinion polls, should be referred to as policy agenda setting (p.83). That is, agenda setting (or policy agenda setting) is concerned with studying some effect of the media agenda on society.

Agenda building theory also suggests that political issues progress from media discussion to policy making (Cobb & Elder, 1983). Comparatively, agenda building “is concerned with a broader picture, where media and public agendas influence public policy” (Berkowitz, 1994, p.83). Agenda building (e.g., Cobb & Elder, 1983; Cobb, Ross

& Ross, 1976) is “the process in which demands of various groups in society become an item of legitimate attention by public officials” (Takeshita, 1997, p.21). It is the interplay

between citizens and the media in policymaking as it pertains to the social construction of

policy issues through public discourse.

Media Influence in Agenda Setting and Agenda Building.

Investigations of media influence and framing on personal attitudes have been

conducted since mid-twentieth century. The epistemological and methodological

orientation of these studies often relates to the researchers’ values regarding whether

policy experts further or inhibit participatory democracy (e.g., Fisher, 2009), and

assumptions regarding agency relative to determinism, the degree to which individuals

produce or are produced by the discourse. That is, individually and socially, people use

frames to construct social reality, but to at least some extent their cognitive and affective

knowledge, behaviors, and material circumstances are also structured by that reality.

Charles Osgood, George Suci, & Percy Tannenbaum (1957), for example, used

semantic differential scales to assess attitude change as a result of mass media programs

(pp. 305-311) and as a result of messages structured in different ways (pp. 240-241).

More recently, Adam Berinsky and Donald Kinder (2006) cited seventeen empirical

studies that “clearly demonstrate that opinion depends in a systematic and intelligible way on how issues are framed” (p.642), an assertion consistent with the findings of the two experimental tests conducted in their study. This is exemplary of what might be

considered the textual determinism thesis (see Chandler, 2002), which extrapolates to the

idea that “the framing effect [of the media] is powerful enough to induce individual-level

opinion change” (Jacoby, 2000, p.750), and that framing “can influence public opinion by

shaping how citizens connect their abstract values to political issues” (Brewer, 2002,

p.303).

The implication for public policy is that if “frames influence how citizens link

their values to issues, then political elites may be able to shape the public’s understanding of political issues by disseminating value frames through the mass media” (Brewer, 2002, p.303). Conceptually, this runs close to a Marxist view where a single dominant ideology that represents the interests of the material and intellectual force of society (which is posited to be one and the same) can be effectively imposed on the whole of society with little resistance under the “illusion of common interests” (see Marx & Engels’ discussion on “Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas,” 1970, pp.64-67).

The emphasis on the determining aspect of language as a mediator of ideas is, to a large extent, a break from the historical materialism associated with traditional Marxist dialects and, in a way, a return to Hegel’s idealism. Put differently, the Marxist thought found in structuralism holds the view that material power underlies ideology, whereas the

Hegelian thesis suggests the opposite; that ideas, especially those involving categorizations, produce material differences. This must be considered with regard to the argument regarding the role of mediated policy discourse in a democratic society, and opens the discussion of potential for limitations on the media’s influence on public opinion.

Limitations on Media Influence.

Contrary to the top-down elite-driven framing thesis, the bottom-up view holds that “what we know about the nature of the social world depends upon how we frame and

interpret the cues we receive about that world” (Edelman, 1993, p.231). The Foucauldian interpretation common to critical discourse analytic (CDA) studies that relate framing theory to power, domination, discursive formations, and orders of discourse (Van Dijk,

2001) is that there are, at the very least, margins of freedom in which the dominant ideology can be resisted. As Michel Foucault (1980) writes, “discourse can be both an instrument and effect of power but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance, and a starting point for an opposing strategy” (p.100). The idea is that framing is not a totalizing force, and that “if framing did possess such power the notion of unpopular policies would hinge solely on leaders’ framing abilities” (Ross, 2000, p.172).

Rather, citizens “actively filter, sort, and reorganize information in personally meaningful ways in the process of constructing an understanding of public issues” (Neuman, Just &

Crigler, 1992, p.77).

Some research suggests that policy attitudes are predisposed by social identities

(e.g., Walsh, 2004; Zaller, 1998), and that citizens negotiate meaning by heavily drawing on their own experiential knowledge and popular wisdom, which “rarely supports frames promoted by officials that invoke the dominant cultural themes” (Gamson, 1992, p.162).

For example, according to Kate Kenski (2003), Clinton’s approval rating remained high during his second presidential administration despite “the significantly high” strategically-framed media coverage of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. If there was a media effect, it was that the scandal stories backfired by raising public cynicism toward the media rather than Clinton (Kenski, 2003, p.264). Today, as increasingly more people have access to internet content, social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, and

Twitter, have greater potential to influence agenda setting, as demonstrated with the 2011

Egyptian Revolution inspired by a dissident Facebook page and YouTube videos

(Preston, 2011).

According to this view, culture is not viewed as entirely deterministic and repressive of individual agency, but rather the space where meanings and values, and subsequent social actions, are negotiated. There may therefore be a normative expectation that the media should advance discursive democracy by providing public space for the contestation of ideas, with no single group dominating the discourse all the time. In particular, the media should “reflect a variety of sources and voices of community interests, not just ‘official’ sources or those with the power, access, and ability to

influence news choices” (Coleman & Dysart, 2005, p.6).

Ideographic Discourse

The excessive media coverage of the Monica Lewinski scandal that supplanted

public discourse on more substantive policy issues is illustrative of precisely the type of

mediatization that breeds cynical attitudes towards public discourse as a vehicle for

authentic democracy (Fox & Miller, 2005; Kenski, 2003). Public discourse of this type is

characterized as having devolved into ideographic discourse, highly symbol-driven policy contests that jeopardize democratic processes (Miller & Fox, 2007). McGee’s

(1980) concept of the ideograph is that of a symbol that links rhetoric with ideology: it is

a high-order abstraction that functions an agent of political consciousness by signifying

an ideological commitment to an ill-defined normative goal. In this respect, an ideograph

can represent a frame, and this is particularly the case in Miller’s (2012) adaptation of an

ideograph as “a constellation of connotations capable of generating meaningful

coherence, especially when tied together with story lines into a policy narrative” (p.3).

Policy studies that involve ideographic analyses are seemingly equivalent to either

“frame reflection” case studies (c.f., Schön & Rein, 1994; Clarke, 1999, 2002), or the

semiotic interpretive approach to identifying frames in media imagery (c.f.,

Papadopoulos, 2008; Cloud, 2004).

The interpretation of ideographic discourse provided by Hugh Miller and Charles

Fox (2007) idealizes a public sphere where policies would otherwise be authentically

deliberated using words that do more honest denotative work, and carry less rhetorical

and ideological baggage, as was advocated by Thomas Sprat (1667), who called for

language to be as near to “Mathematical plainness” as possible (see Harris, 2005, p.50).

Comparatively, in ideographical discourse, the complexity of policy issues is lost in the

phantasmagoria of slogans that stand in for real talk. The gist of Miller and Fox’s (2007)

critique is that policy choices are all the more difficult when meanings are slanted or

obfuscated by “insincere, attention-grabbing symbolic imagery” (pp.125-126). Because discourse at this level no longer involves any substantive dialogue, “democratic decision making begins to look like a contest for the capture and appropriation of visceral symbols” (Miller, 2002, p.25, 88).

In ideographic discourse, the policy debates are a “bumper-sticker ballyhoo” of

“policy slogans that have only the most tenuous relationship to the complex realities they pretend to describe” (Fox & Miller, 1997, p.64). Miller and Fox (2007) argue that postmodern hyper-politics has become “increasingly estranged from democratic

discourse” (p.126). This sentiment is consistent with that of Jürgen Habermas (1996), as

Terrence Kelly (2004) summarizes:

Far flung participants are linked through mass media in an ongoing public discussion. However, as this public is, by and large, virtual and decentralized…how can public deliberation (if we can even call it that) be linked to political power? (p.53)

That is, deliberative democracy is jeopardized when symbols, talking-points bullets and slogans obscure meanings, because ultimately the symbols invoked and the categories assigned to different problems and solutions will determine a course for social action

(Kelly & Maynard-Moody, 1993, p.135). Herbert Marcuse (1964/2012) put it this way:

“as clichés govern speech and writing, communication precludes the genuine development of meaning” (p.90). This is precisely the danger of policy discourses that become a staged display in which “arguments are transmuted into symbols to which again one cannot respond by arguing but only by identifying with them” (Habermas,

1991, p.206).

Ideographic Discourse and Mediatization.

Ideographic discourse can be thought of as a consequence of the mediatization of the policy process. The media play a central role in politics and the policy process (Hajer,

2009). Increasingly, political institutions are “dependent on and shaped by mass media but nevertheless remain in control of political processes and functions” (Mazzoleni &

Schulz, 1999, p.247). The danger is that while media journalists may attempt to reflect social reality, “at the same time, they contribute their own frames, and invent their own clever catchphrases, drawing on a popular culture that they share with their audience”

(Gamson & Modigliani, 1989 p.3).

However, contrary to the criticism by Walter Lippmann (1922), Jürgen Habermas

(1991), Jean Baudrillard (e.g., Baudrillard & Maclean, 1985), and others who see the

media as a propaganda machine, a monological voice that massifies and thus

depoliticizes the public, an argument can be made that mediatization does not necessarily

preclude participatory democracy (e.g., see Keane, 1991). To the contrary, in the

mediatized age, political power that may have at one time been more centralized or

aligned with the State (e.g., Kessler, 1994, p.270) is now dispersed among the various

new actors who have “easy access to the stage” (Hajer, 2009, p.4). Yes, a multi-billion

dollar public relations industry has “reordered the political landscape” (Hajer, 2009, p.4).

And this includes campaign ‘spin doctors’, interest group marketing consultants and

media relations specialists, and public administrators working in public or community affairs as information officers and government spokespersons.

The consequence of this is a new type of pluralism and an agenda-building process in which policy actors “compete for media space in pursuit of disparate organizational interests, collective aims and public legitimacy” (Cottle, 2003, p.3). As

Michael Gurevitch and Mark Levy (1985, p. 19) contend, the media provide “a site on which various social groups, institutions, and ideologies struggle over the definition and construction of social reality” (cited from Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3).

The critique that mediatized policy debate jeopardizes democratic processes might be countered with the argument that such public discourse brings attention to social problems. The ideographic slogans used to frame a policy issue “provide some meaning to those incapable of understanding what is complex, or not wanting to spend the time to

master it” (Sharkansky, 2002, p.75). These slogans and rhetorical symbols can be

thought of as heuristics that make the conversation simpler to grasp and accessible to

more people, even if they do serve to define the issue by highlighting a particular

dimension of a problem, or propose a solution by grounding the issue to a particular

ideological view. “Politics deals with the domination and subordination of conflicts,”

and policy choices are notably influenced by elites and pressure groups (Schattschneider,

1960, p.71). But “as more and more citizens are drawn to an issue, usually because of conflicts among elites, the process will more and more approximate the preferences of the majority” (Jones, 1994, p.182).

Through frame amplification, frame extension and other frame-bridging strategies, government officials, the media, and social movement organizations attempt to engage and co-opt the public (Snow, Rochford, Worden & Benford, 1986). Tankard

(2001) notes, for example, the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP) in Boston provides consultation services to various interest groups on “how to use the news media to advance their political goals” by “developing frames that resonate with the broader political or social tendencies within American society” (p.97). But such discourse provides “open text that can and often is read oppositionally, at least in part” (Gamson et al., 1992, p.373).

It may be that the indoctrinating power of the media is overrated (Marcuse,

1964/2012, p.8). As William Gamson and colleagues (1992) found, citizens will draw on popular wisdom and their own experiential knowledge, and craft their own ideographical slogans that counterframe those that dominate media discourse. Further, “media discourse

allows plenty of room for challengers,” which provides for “competing constructions of

reality” (Gamson et al., 1992, p.373). Oppositional views find support “from readers

whose daily lives may lead them to construct meaning in ways that go beyond media

imagery” (Gamson et al., 1992, p.373). The ideographic discourse of mediated policy

talk therefore may heighten public awareness and enables citizens to construct new

generative metaphors that further democratic processes more so than impede them.

Frames

Most generally, theoretical conceptualizations of frames and framing approximate

the common use of these terms outside of formal scholarly discourse, such as with the

ideas of a frame of mind, frame of reference, or the frame of an argument (Entman,

1993). The concept of a frame can suggest the underlying supportive system of a

structure, like a skeleton, the chassis of a car, or the frame of a house (Minsky, 1988;

Tankard, 2001; Van Gorp, 2005; Yanow, 2000). In this sense, a frame is a high-level

abstraction, a generic type of which there are specific instances, much like a category or a

theme. For example, Iyengar and Kinder (1987/1995) define frames of this type as

thematic frames. A frame can also mean a border that, like a picture frame, demarcates

and encourages selective attention to a particular subset of information, diverting

attention away from information outside the frame (Bateson, 1972/2000; Hajer, 2003;

Yanow, 2000). In this sense, the frame functions as a synecdoche, a part representing the

whole, suggesting that “what is being offered is a ‘slice-of-life’, and that the world outside the frame is carrying on in the same manner as the world depicted in it”

(Chandler, 2002, p.133). The picture frame metaphor can also be used to describe the

role of frames in attitude formation and change, similar to how an ornately carved

mahogany frame and a cheap metal one each suggest different tone for viewing a picture

(Tankard, 2001, p.99). These conceptualizations are often conflated in suggesting that

frames simultaneously provide conceptual models, or structured representations, which

emphasize some attributes over others. Such attributes become linked to other cultural

and emotional referents through a chain of signification (e.g., Lacan, 1957/2006), a

premise that is foundational for the idea of a frame’s symbolic representation as an ideograph (McGee, 1980; Miller, 2012).

Frames as Structured Representations.

Frames have been conceptualized as structured mental representations that organize the belief systems of individuals by applying background knowledge toward the production and understanding of communicated messages (Brown & Yule, 2003). These frames can be thought of as exemplars or archetypes that, when maintained in human memory, are sometimes called cognitive frames (Barsalou, 1992), or individual-frames

(Scheufele, 1999). Conceptually, frames of this type are derived from Kant’s

(1781/1996) notion of schema; a product of the imagination that serves as a medium for cognition and perception by connecting concepts to their images (p.214). The term, schema, was later used by Frederic Bartlett in Remembering (1932/1995), to refer “to an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be operating in any well adapted response” (p.201). According to Bartlett, the memory of these experiences explains the emergence of “attitudes toward the massed effects of a

40 series of past reactions,” and thus a predisposition in interpreting future experiences

(1932/1995, p.201).

Bartlett’s theory of schema as an application of memory is foundational to a line of structured representation theories that developed during the 1970s. Examples of this stream of research include Robert Axelrod’s (1973) Schema Theory, Marvin Minsky’s

(1974/1997) Framework for Representing Knowledge, David Rumelhart’s (1975) Notes on a Schema for Stories, and Roger Schank and Robert Abelson’s (1977) Scripts, Plans,

Goals, and Understanding. For Axelrod, schemata are “pre-existing assumptions about the way the world is organized” (p.1248). These assumptions are referenced when a person is confronted with a new situation. That is, “a person tries to fit new information into the pattern that was used in the past to interpret information about the same kind of situation” (p.1248). There is, however, a potential for incompatibility and conflict, where, “if the new information does not fit very well, something has to give” (p.1248).

This is also the essence of Minsky’s frame theory. According to Minsky (1974/1997),

“when one encounters a new situation (or makes a substantial change in one’s view of the present problem), one selects from memory a structure called a frame; a remembered framework to be adapted to fit reality by changing details as necessary” (p.111). Through one’s experiences, these frames become filled with certain “default” assignments about what to expect and what to do if those expectations are not confirmed (1974/1997, p.112). When applied to a situation involving a patterned sequence of events, these frames can be thought of as providing a script or vignette that governs expectations or inferences at each stage (Schank & Abelson, 1977; Abelson, 1981). Rumelhart (1975)

describes this governing mechanism as a story grammar, a set of elements and relational

rules for the organization of all possible structures.

In the study of public policy, Schön and Rein (1994) define these frames as

“underlying structures of belief, perception, and appreciation” (p.23). In addition to

Schön and Rein’s conceptualization of frames, Richard Freeman (2006, p.382) notes that the idea that “actors have ‘mind-sets’ or ‘habits of attention’ that serve to frame particular problems and possible solutions in familiar ways” also has equivalents in Geoffrey

Vickers’ (1995) theory of an appreciative system, James March’s (1972) account of model bias in social action, and Hugh Heclo’s (1974) concept of the internal set. Ken

Young (1977) describes the “assumptive worlds of political actors” as the “subjective

understanding of the environment in which they operate,” which consists of “the

intermingled elements of belief, perception, evaluation, and intention as responses to the

reality ‘out there’” (pp. 2-3, and also quoted in Wolman & Ford, 1996, p.88). Harold

Wolman and Coit Cook Ford (1996) expand on this concept in their examination of

Mayoral cognitive structures in metropolitan Detroit. For Wolman and Ford, an

assumptive world consists of beliefs, values, perceptions, preferences or evaluations, and

motivations that provide a rationale for action (p.89). Heinz Eulau and Kenneth Prewitt

(1973), in their study of city councilors, use the concept of a mental map to describe how

challenges and opportunities in the physical and social environment are perceived relative

to their expectations and preferences. Robert Putnam (1976) uses the concept of

orientations as similar to frames, with four types of orientations that include: “cognitive

orientations, assumptions about how society works; normative orientations, views about

how society ought to work; interpersonal orientations, attitudes about other players in the

political game; and stylistic orientations, structural characteristics of elite belief systems”

(p.80).

Although each of these theorists “suggests somewhat different mechanisms the

mind undergoes during cognition” (Segal, 1995, p.8), they are less competing theories

than alternative metaphors for describing how knowledge of the world is organized in the

human mind (Brown & Yule, 2003, p.238). They share in common the belief that “the

reader must use contextual and world knowledge to understand and represent the text as

intended by the writer; the appropriate structure needs to be selected, activated, and

updated in order for the message to be completed” (Segal, 1995, p.8). That is, the mind

creates a framework consisting of the most generic features of an object, singular event,

or sequence of occurrences, formed from memories of the general concept. These frames guide human perceptions, form expectations, and link concepts to attitudes and values, such as Vickers’ (1995) describes in his notion of appreciation, for example.

Bateson’s Psychological Frame.

Gregory Bateson’s theory of psychological frames is presented in his 1955 essay,

“A Theory of Play and Fantasy” (republished 1972/2000). In his theoretical outline,

Bateson notes that psychological frames are at once (a) exclusive and (b) inclusive, meaning that by including certain messages, others are excluded, and vice versa, (c) related to the ‘premises’ that assist the mind by reminding the thinker what is relevant and that messages outside the frame may be ignored, (d) are metacommunicative in that any message that defines a frame also aids the receiver to understand the messages

included within the frame and (e) vice versa, as in the way the metacommunication of

punctuation marks are used to define the frame of sentence; and (f) are related to

perceptual gestalt, such in seeing a picture and being able differentiate figure from

ground.

The idea is that frames are a notice-and-prefer system that guides the thinker as to which messages are mutually relevant, and those messages outside the frame that may be ignored (Bateson, 1972/2000, pp.186-187). However, Bateson’s theory of frames also includes a process for generating expectations, such as when “the frame is consciously recognized, or represented in vocabulary” (Bateson, 1972/2000, p.186-187) in situations that invoke sets of normative expectations, inferences, and behavioral or psychological cues.

Goffman’s Frame Analysis.

Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974/1986) is considered foundational to contemporary frame theory research. As Zhongdang Pan and Gerald Kosicki (2001) note, “over the years scholars have offered numerous definitions of frames or framing…[but] in one way or another, all make reference to Goffman’s seminal work”

(p.37). In Frame Analysis, Goffman draws from and combines Bateson’s concept of psychological frames with the idea of multiple realities proposed by William James and

Alfred Schutz to create a descriptive model that explains how individuals understand “the meaning of experience” (Goffman, 1974/1986, p.4).

Erving Goffman’s (1974/1986) frame analytic model most essentially consists of natural and social frameworks that together comprise “schemata of interpretation that

enable individuals to locate, perceive, identify and label occurrences or life experiences”

(p.21). Natural frameworks provide an unguided cognitive organization of “facts” about purely physical world (e.g., differentiating rocks from trees). Social frameworks comprise learned cultural values and rules for navigating the socially interactive world

(Goffman, 1974/1986, p.22). Social frames often take the form of stories about how the world is, and, in pre-existing any one individual, become a mechanism for selective perception and social construction. According to Goffman (1974/1986):

What people understand to be the organization of their experience, they buttress, and perforce, self-fulfillingly. They develop a corpus of cautionary tales, games, riddles, experiments, newsy stories, and other scenarios, which elegantly confirm a frame-relevant view of the working of the world (p.563).

Notably, the binary system of natural and social frameworks, the deference of human agency to their social frameworks, and the abstract rules that govern their function provides a frame analytic model are closer to the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and early Roland Barthes than interpretive social science (Denzin & Keller, 1981).

Frederic Jameson (1976) described Goffman’s Frame Analysis as “the semiotization of ethnomethodology…an invention of something like a grammar and a set of quasi- syntactic abstractions for analyzing social life” (Jameson, 1976, p.120). Goffman’s

(1981b) theory of meaning and structure, which emphasizes the power of external social forces over individual human agency, is made more explicit his response to Norman

Denzin and Charles Keller’s (1981) commentary on Frame Analysis:

Frames are a central part of culture and are institutionalized in various ways...the individuals I know don’t invent the world of chess when they sit down to play…Whatever the idiosyncrasies of their own motives and interpretations they must gear their participation in what is available by way of standard doings and standard reasons for doings. (Goffman, 1981b, p.63)

Goffman’s (1981b) argument is not that frames remain unchanged over time, or

that individuals cannot create or amend social frames, only that most social frames

develop out of a cultural system larger than any single individual and are influential on

individual thought. Goffman’s concern with social frames and the hegemony of cultural

forces is more concisely presented in Gender Advertisements (1979). This work focuses

on the cultural frames implicit in advertising images, very much in the spirit of Roland

Barthes’ Mythologies (1972/1984) and Marshall McLuhan’s The Mechanical Bride

(1951/2002). The similarity across these works is that they highlight how media

messages connotatively communicate values and morals in a way that makes them seem

natural, uncontested, and depoliticized.

Frame Analysis (Goffman, 1974/1986) includes an explicit focus on discourse

only in the last chapter, “The Frame Analysis of Talk” (pp.496-559). This last chapter of

Frame Analysis can be thought of as a prelude to Goffman’s last published work, Forms

of Talk (1981a), which extends frame-analytic themes to discourse. A relevant theoretical concept provided in this work is Goffman’s notion of the “participation

framework,” which suggests that when a word is spoken (or written), “those in perceptual

range will have some sort of participation status relative to it” (p.3). This idea is very

similar to the Foucauldian theory of power/discourse (c.f., Goffman, 1981a; Schneck,

1987) with regard to the idea that discourse is encoded to provide a “normative

specification of appropriate conduct” (Goffman, 1981a, p.3). In political communication,

Goffman’s idea of a participation framework has implications for defining problems,

identifying root causes, making moral evaluations, and predicting the effects of solutions.

These are the aspects of framing that have since received attention from scholars who take an explicitly constructionist or critical approach to the study of public policy, social movements, and media communication (e.g., Entman, 1993; Gamson & Modigliani,

1987; Pan & Kosicki, 1993; Snow & Benford, 1992).

Entman’s Framing Paradigm.

Robert Entman (1993) notes that frames typically: “define problems, usually in terms of cultural values; diagnose causes; evaluate these causes by making normative or moral judgments; and prescribe remedies, and predict their likely effects” (p.52).

Entman’s (1993) theory of frames is particularly useful in that it identifies frames as structures; distinguishes frames from the activity of framing (or reframing); and also distinguishes the frames of communicators and receivers from frames found in the text of communication materials. These are also distinguished from the ideological frames of the larger culture. That is, Entman (1993, p.52-53) theorizes that frames have at least four locations in the communication process: the communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture:

Communicators make conscious or unconscious framing judgments in deciding what to say, guided by frames (often called schemata) that organize their belief systems.

Text contains frames, which are manifested by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of factors or judgments.

The frames that guide the receiver’s thinking and conclusion may or may not reflect the frames in the text and the framing intention of the communicator.

Culture is the stock of commonly invoked frames; in fact, culture might be defined as the empirically demonstratable set of common frames exhibited in the

discourse of talking and thinking of most people in a social grouping. (Entman, 1993, pp. 52-53)

The frames of communicators and receivers have already been discussed together as the cognitive frames of individuals. The frames in culture and frames in text are next discussed separately.

Frames in Text.

The text is the intermediary space between the communicator and the receiver. It bridges “the larger social and cultural realms and everyday understandings of social interaction” (Friedland & Zhong, 1996, p.13, cited in Scheufele, 1999, p.106). The most compelling data for rigorous research into interpretive frames is found in the way in which texts are structured: “This kind of data provide a new way of analyzing the structure of mental life and a more rigorous method of verifying cultural content contained therein” (Johnston, 1995, p.234).

According to Entman, (1993), the frames of the text “are manifested by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments” (p.53). James Hertog and Douglas McLeod (2001) refer to frames in text as

“structures of meaning that include a set of core concepts and ideas, especially basic conflicts, metaphors, myths and narratives” (p.159). William Gamson and Andre

Modigliani (1987) write that a frame is “a central idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events, weaving a connection among them. The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue” (p.143). This connects frame theory with narrative theory in that, as Berinsky and Kinder (2006) note, “a good frame is

at its heart a good story” (p.642). Iyengar and Kinder (1987/1995) describe frames having a narrative structure as episodic frames.

Schön and Rein’s (1994) conceptualization of rhetorical frames and action frames as policy frames, “the frames an institutional actor employs when defining the problem

underlying a policy issue” (p.33), is implicit in the language used in stories and

arguments. Rhetorical frames “underlie the persuasive use of story and argument in policy debate” (1994, p.32), whereas action frames inform policy practice:

In policy debate, policy stories and the frames they contain serve the rhetorical functions of persuasion, justification, and symbolic display…In policy practice, policy stories influence the shaping of laws, regulations, allocation decisions, institutional mechanisms, sanctions, incentives, procedures, and patterns of behavior that determine what policies actually mean in action. (1994, p.32)

Although a particular frame can serve both rhetorical and action functions, Schön and

Rein provide the distinction that “frames implicit in language used to win the allegiance of large groups of people differ from the frames implicit in the agreements that determine the content of laws, regulations, and procedures” (1994, p.32). Accordingly, when considering Entman’s (1993) definition, the policy frame in a news article would be the frame an institutional actor employs to define the problem underlying a policy issue as manifested by the “presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments” (pp.52-53).

Cultural Frames.

Policy issues tend to arise in environments that are always some part of some broader political and economic setting, which in turn are located in a particular period of

history or time. Rein and Schön (1993, p.154) describe this as the nested context of the

policy. That is, the issue culture of a particular policy is always “rooted in time and

space” (Gamson & Lasch, 1983, p.397). This speaks to external factors that may

influence the adoption of a policy innovation, but also culturally-encoded ways of thinking. A key component of issue’s nested context would be the political culture informed by a particular paradigm (Kuhn, 1996) or episteme (Foucault, 1972/2002).

That is, the policy stories of a particular issue are integrated in a web of other related stories, enveloped in “a slice of history common to all branches of knowledge, which imposes on each one the norms and postulates a general stage of reason, a certain structure of thought” (Foucault, 1972/2002, p.211). In this sense, the nested context can similar to the idea of a metanarrative, literally, the story surrounding the story (Van

Eeten, 2006).

For a given period of history, the episteme is a cultural force, a “totality of relations,” that unites the discursive practices that “give rise to formalized systems”

(Foucault, 1972/2002, p.211). William Gamson and Kathryn Lasch (1983) describe the culture of an issue as a “catalogue of available idea elements organized and clustered in various ways” (p.398). Similarly, for Entman (1993), the issue culture is “the stock of commonly invoked frames; in fact, culture might be defined as the empirically demonstrable set of common frames exhibited in the discourse and thinking of most people in a social grouping” (p.53). Van Gorp (2010) contends that the idea that there is a cultural stock of frames “engenders new insights into coverage of certain socially relevant issues and opens the door to alternative perspectives” (p.104), which, in turn, can

be used in frame-reflective and frame-critical analysis. That is, having a pluralistic

repertoire of frames implies a large range of perspectives through which citizens,

policymakers, advocate groups and scientists can be provided alternative points of view

to understand issues and events and communicate about an issue (Van Gorp, 2010,

p.104).

Communications scholar, Stephen Reese (2001), defines frames at the cultural

level, as “organizing principles that are socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world” (p.11). Schön and Rein

(1994), identify cultural frames existing in two hierarchical levels above the policy

frames of the individual institutional actor. At the organizational level are institutional

action frames, which are “generic” action frames “used to structure a wide range of

problematic policy situations” (p.33). These are complexes of frames informed by an

institution’s particular organizational culture. Schön and Rein (1994) note that “the

action frames held by individuals may be only loosely coupled to the action frames of the

institutions of which they are members” (p.33). These institutional action frames are the

“local expressions of broad, culturally shared systems of beliefs called metacultural

frames” (p.33). Similar sentiment is expressed by Boezeman, Leroy, Maas, and

Kruitwagen (2010) who define frames at this level as “a more or less coherent

constellation of facts, beliefs, worldviews, values and preferred actions” (p.1).

The relationship between the stock of cultural frames and those manifest in text is somewhat analogous to the Saussurean distinction between langue, the system of language, which is both a social institution and a system of values, and parole, the

selection and concrete use of language in discourse (as described by Barthes, 1977, p.14);

the text of a discourse represents actual words and sentences (consciously or

unconsciously) selected by an individual for use in a particular instance. As Pan and

Kosicki (2001) write, “The adoption of a certain frame is manifested in paradigmatic choices from the existing cultural repertoire of symbolic resources” (p.40). Similar to the

way Bateson (1972/2000) described individual psychological frames as both inclusive

and exclusive, the system of language and larger episteme simultaneously enables and

limits the thinking and description of worldly objects, experiences and events.

Cultural frames include archetypes and the value-frames that distinguish ‘good’

from ‘bad’ (Ball-Rokeach, Power, Guthrie & Waring, 1990) on a broad enough scale that

they can be considered master-frames (Koenig, 2004). Examples of master frames that repeatedly surface include archetypal gender distinctions in feminist literature (e.g.,

Stivers, 1993, 2000) and, in the literature across framing studies, Thomas Koenig (2006, p.64) cites the ethno-nationalist frame, which presumes “the existence of ontological

(quasi-) primordial groups based on ascriptive criteria such as religion, culture, or blood relationships” (e.g., Billig, 1995); the liberal-individualist citizenship frame, which

“postulates the individual freedom and equality of all humans vis-à-vis the state” (e.g.,

Eder, 1995; McAdam, 1996); and the harmony with nature frame, which “assumes the existence of different realms of culture and nature and attributes to nature an intrinsic worth” (e.g., Gamson, 1992). The latter two relate to the conditional, classic, and sustainability community policy frames embedded by actors in institutions to “form

alternative ‘packages’ of policy ideas defining the relationship between economic and

environmental policy” (Lenschow & Zito, 2002, p.415).

The determining aspect of language is often emphasized from a

Marxist/structuralist perspective. Marx and Engels (1970) saw ideology as the “shared

illusion of an epoch,” with the “conceptions of the people in question…transformed into

the sole determining, active force, which controls and determines their practice” (p.60).

For the anthropologist, Lévi-Strauss (1963, p.240), structural dialectics promotes Marx’s

theory of historical determinism by providing a “new tool” to scholars who share a

determinist viewpoint. However, it may be important to stress that there must be at least

marginal room for agency and new ideas, otherwise how could we account for change.

James March (1972), for example, examines “the uncritical acceptance of a static

interpretation of human goals” (p.429), and identifies the pre-existence of purpose, the

necessity of consistency, and the primacy of rationality as emergent values that have

become culturally embedded to where they create a “model bias” that compromises the

pursuit of ideals in social action (p.419). March contends, “values change…values develop through experience,” and he calls for more attention to this phenomenon to “aid the development of interesting goals” (p.422). Similarly, Foucault (1972/2002) contends, an episteme, “is not a motionless figure that appears one day with the mission of effacing all that preceded it: it is a constantly moving set of articulations, shifts, and coincidences”

(p.211). This view is shared by the cognitive anthropologist, Charles Frake (1977), who

“argues against the static notion of frames in favor of an interactive model” (Tannen,

1993, p.19). When some aspects of the nested context change, policymakers often

address the situation. In such cases, “the perceived shift of a context may set the climate within which adversarial networks try to reframe a policy issue by renaming the policy terrain, reconstructing interpolations of how things got to be as they are, and proposing what can be done about them” (Rein & Schön, 1993, p.154). That is, “culture does not provide a cognitive map, but rather a set of principles for mapmaking and navigation, resulting in a whole chart case of rough, improvised, continuously revised sketch maps”

(Frake, 1977, pp.6-7, cited in Tannen, 1993, p.19).

Framing and Reframing

According to Fischer (2003), “framing is a dynamic process by which producers and receivers of messages transform information into a meaningful whole by interpreting them through other available social, psychological, and cultural concepts, axioms and principles (p.144). Several framing processes are articulated by David Snow et al. (1986) as frame alignment strategies, including frame bridging, “the linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem” (p.469), and frame extension, constituency-building efforts achieved by portraying “the objectives or activities [of an organization] as attending to or being congruent with the values or interests of potential adherents” (p.472). This is achieved by

“grafting” or incorporating the existing interpretive frames shared by potential adherents in an attempt to appeal to their values and beliefs (Snow et al., 1986, p.473).

Kevin Carragee and Wim Roefs (2004, p.220) describe the framing of political communication as a four-stage process that first involves the sponsorship of frames by political and social elites; then the employment of those frames by media; then the

articulation of frames through media channels; and finally the interpretation of those

frames by message receivers.

For cognitive frames theorists, the act of framing is tacit, accomplished subconsciously to organize experiences (e.g., Bateson, 1972/2000; Goffman 1974/1986;

Schön & Rein, 1994). Framing is not taken as a strategic, deliberative process. Goffman

(1974/1986), for example, uses the concept of keying rather than framing to describe the

process of evoking and manipulating frames, which can be done for benign or

exploitative purposes. Keying, in this sense, is similar to what Iyengar and Kinder

(1987/1995) refer to as priming. Keying, and the idea of re-keying, can achieved through

Schön and Rein’s concept of the generative metaphor, or Roe’s (1994) concept of the

metanarrative, which is used to “underwrite and stabilize the assumptions for decision

making on an issue whose current policy narratives are so conflicting as to polarize

decision-making” (Roe, 1994, p.4). That is, a policy position that rests on a particular

frame of reference can be keyed and re-keyed from different perspectives, inner- and

outer-views, such as through generative metaphors and metanarratives, thus creating the

“hall of mirrors” (e.g., Schön, 1987, p.221).

In media framing studies, Entman (1993) and others allow for the distinction

between conscious and unconscious framing, creating a divide between the cognitive

interpretive structures involved in perception and active framing (or reframing) as a

deliberative, strategic process (e.g., as described in Lakoff, 2004). For Entman, framing

means: “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a

communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal

interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item

described” (p.52). The process of framing in each of the four locations described (the

communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture) involves “selection and salience.”

The term, salience, as used by Entman, means “making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable; increased salience enhances the probability that receivers will perceive the information, discern meaning, process it, and store it in memory” (p.53). Accordingly, the salient, or highlighted, elements are “used to construct an argument about problems and their causation, evaluation, and/or solution” (p.53).

This interpretation is shared by Todd Gitlin (2003) for whom framing is “selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters” (p.6).

The awareness of frames has implications for social action with regard to contextual frames and deliberative attribute framing or reframing. For example, David

Laws and Martin Rein (2003) discuss “reframing as an aspect of governance, political action and policymaking,” and “examine reframing as one of the ways in which the synthesis of these processes can occur” (p.172). Lakoff (2004) describes reframing as the use of language to change the way the public sees the world, and what counts as common sense. Daan Boezeman et al. (2010) emphasize that by highlighting some information, other information is necessarily omitted: “frames function as normative-prescriptive schemata that select information and ideas while ignoring or excluding others” (p.1).

Therefore framing, as described in this sense, is more than a form of rhetoric; it falls into what William H. Riker (1986, 1996) would call a “heresthetic” device. Logic, Riker

(1986) notes, is concerned with the truth value of statements; grammar with communication value; rhetoric with persuasion value; heresthetic (a term coined by

Riker), is concerned with strategy value. Though rhetoric and heresthetic are

“inseparably linked and must be analyzed together” (p.10), Riker sees heresthetic as the point where persuasion ends and manipulation begins. According to Riker (1996):

People win politically by more than rhetorical attraction. Typically they win because they have set up the situation in a way that other people will want to join them—or will feel forced by circumstances to join them—even without any persuasion at all. And this is what heresthetic is about: structuring the world so you can win. (p.9)

The framing of political communication necessarily includes the use of rhetoric, but the manipulation of issue dimensions and use of symbolic arguments become heresthetical approaches to policy discourse.

Manipulation of Issue Dimensions.

Actors in a public discourse will often frame an issue by manipulating its dimensions. This is a particular type of heresthetical approach: it is one way policy actors “structure the world so they can win” (Riker, 1986, p.ix). Examples of framing in this sense, and its effectiveness, are found throughout “heuristics and biases research”

(e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 2006). The general idea is that decision-making can be confounded simply by shifting the emphasis from one evaluative dimension to another, even when conserving the overall amount of information being considered (e.g., Tversky

& Kahneman, 1981, 1986). Heuristics and biases research also extends to the study of attribute salience transfer, where framing can affect also emotional responses, and has

even been shown to influence sensory perceptions (e.g., Levin & Gaeth, 1988; Braun,

Gaeth & Levin, 1997).

However, in public debates, issue manipulation often amounts to sophistry:

“victory in argumentation at whatever cost, outwitting opponents, is the sole aim of

disputation, no matter how bad the argument” (Angeles, 1981, p.265 cited in Hunt, 1991,

p.32). Cognitively, manipulation involves the interference with processes of

understanding, including the exploitation of cognitive heuristics to produce biased mental

models; discursively, manipulation generally involves ideological discourse (van Dijk,

2006, p.359). Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz (1962, p.952) write that policy actors use discursive manipulation to “create and reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues they find innocuous” (cited in Birkland, 2007, p.66). This can include what Goffman (1974/1986) calls the keying of frames through exploitive fabrication, “inducing in others a false belief about what it is that is going on” (p.83).

Examples of discursive manipulation include noncontradictory arguments and symbolic argumentation, including ideographic argumentative strategies. In the context of a policy debate, antagonists frequently challenge the truthfulness of their opponents’

claims, but the strategy of noncontradictory argumentation—changing of the focus of the

debate—is more common and often more effective (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993, p.107).

The manipulation of issue dimensions relates closely to the creation of what Gramsci

conceptualized as hegemonic culture. According to T. J. Jackson Lears (2002), “as

Gramsci understood, the hegemonic culture depends not on the brainwashing of ‘the

masses’ but on the tendency of public discourse to make some forms of experience

readily available to consciousness while ignoring or suppressing others” (p.334). By underscoring or highlighting certain aspects of an issue while downplaying others, policy actors can “shift attentiveness in the public debate from one underlying evaluative dimension to another” (Jones, 1994, p.182). For example, a policy issue can be framed to

“embellish the seriousness and injustice of a particular social condition or redefine as unjust and immoral what was previously seen as unfortunate but perhaps tolerable”

(Snow & Benford, 1992, p.137). It’s important to note that categorical labels that are seemingly neutral can also have somewhat hidden policy implications and contribute to this hegemony (Edelman, 1993).

Symbolic Arguments.

Another debate strategy is to distract the audience from rational policy positions by infusing the discourse with arguments that are highly symbolic (Hojnacki &

Baumgartner, 2003). Symbolic arguments are “affect-eliciting narratives that involve accessible images or appeals to widely accepted social values” (Hojnacki &

Baumgartner, 2003, p.3). In a sense, all policy arguments are inherently symbolic because they rely on linguistic expression; language itself is a system of symbols (Miller,

2002, p.81). But symbolic arguments are distinct in that they connect a particular policy alternative to unassailable symbolic values, such as “democracy, peace, safety, liberty, equal rights, or the public health” (Hojnacki & Baumgartner, 2003, p.1). As Dewey

(1927) earlier noted, the concepts, “fraternity, liberty and equality isolated from communal life are hopeless abstractions” (p.149).

The highly polysemic interpretations of symbols can present a kind of paradox

with regard to the meaning of a policy in actual social practice (e.g., as described in

Stone, 2002). For example, Peter deLeon (1995) illustrates this point by describing the

concept of democracy as being “disturbingly vague”; it can refer to “indirect Madisonian democracy, one of representation and factions” or “a more participatory, deToquevillean democracy dependent upon general civic participation” (p.886). This sentiment is echoed by James Bovard (2005), who writes, “democracy is a magical word that permits speakers to automatically fog the minds of many listeners” (p.8). At best, the symbols that represent citizen values serve as a contextually situated “relational placeholders in a socially-constituted system of meaning” (Rockhill, 2006, p.8). At worst, they become self-referential epiphenomena, second-order utterances that refer only to themselves, completely divorced from lived experience (Miller, 2002, p.39).

Ideographic Symbols.

Ideographic symbols operate through connotation (Miller, 2012) to link rhetoric with ideology (McGee, 1980). Ideographs are the slogans, catchphrases and other signs and symbols used in symbolic arguments, such as Marie Hojnacki and Frank

Baumgartner’s (2003) examples of “democracy, peace, safety, liberty, equal rights, or the public health” (p.1), when used as a form of code to advance a particular policy position.

According to Hugh Miller (2012), an ideograph can be any sign or symbol where

“connotation is an integral part of the meaning-building process” (p.5). The significance of the ideograph for framing is that values that underlie policy positions may be implicit and tacitly accepted (Schön & Rein, 1994). For example, Phyllis Pease Chock’s (1995)

study on the immigration reform policy debate showed that even language that is not

overtly racist can still be encoded to reflect certain ideological positions. More subtly,

logical arguments grounded in the technical merits and the feasibility of a particular

policy direction can symbolically represent an underlying instrumentalist ideology that is

taken for granted or being naturalized. For example, Murray Edelman (1993), in his

discussion on the categorization of the Persian Gulf War, observed:

The labeling of a war either as “noble crusade” or as “naked aggression” reeks of polemics and so evokes suspicion and resistance in many. But its characterization as “foreign policy” or as “military action” looks at first blush simply like realistic description. Yet those labels are also examples of arbitrary highlighting and exclusion, and they are vital to the construction of public support. (p.232)

The terms Edelman (1993) highlights, “military action” and “foreign policy,” are ideographs, connecting a policy position to an underlying ideology. They constitute a subtly coded move in a policy language game of issue manipulation. Similarly, Charles

Fox (1996) observed the Clinton administration’s National Performance Review was rife with symbols that can be interpreted as ideographic or aligned with a particular ideology, such as the way “customer service” is ideologically linked to consumerism, and, as such, distorts the regulatory functions of government and marginalizes the concept of citizenship (p.260).

Metaphors and Other Frame Indicators

Every symbol elicits from the receiver memories, which may be combined with new information to construct one or more frames, mental representations involving attributes, expectations, attitudinal dispositions, and abstract models involving causal relationships, associated the concept being symbolized (Lacan, 1957/2006; Tannen,

1993). The mapping of symbols to generic semantic frames is precisely the project of

semantic linguistics (e.g., Fillmore, 2006), such as the FrameNet project at University of

California, Berkeley (Ruppenhofer, Ellsworth, Petruck, Johnson & Schelfczyk, 2010).

Frames in a text are indicated by keywords and sentences that include metaphors, slogans

or catchphrases, stereotypes, sources of information, moral appeals, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments (Entman, 1993; Gamson

& Lasch, 1983; Van Gorp, 2007).

According to Schön and Rein (1994), “metacultural frames, organized around generative metaphors, are at the root of policy stories that shape both rhetorical and action frames” (p.34). Other rhetorical structures, such as exemplars, slogans, catchphrases, depictions, and visual images, including imagery from popular culture (e.g.,

Sementelli & Abel, 2007) are also considered metaphorical in the sense that “metaphor is a genus of which all other tropes are species” (Bede cited in Eco, 1983, p.217).

Metaphors are powerful rhetorical devices that can fill a symbolic, affect-eliciting role and manipulate an issue’s dimensions to shape and skew perceptions of reality.

According to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (2003), “our ordinary conceptual system, which guides how we think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature…we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of metaphors…consciously and unconsciously” (p.3). This point is also noted by Gareth

Morgan (1997, p.4), who also emphasizes the kind of “one-sided insight” and

“distortions” metaphor creates:

Metaphor is often regarded as just a device for embellishing discourse, but its significance is much greater than this…metaphor implies a way of thinking and a way of seeing that pervade how we understand our world… Metaphor uses evocative images to create what might be described as “constructive falsehoods,” which, if taken literally, or to an extreme, become absurd. (p.4)

Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green (2006) contend that Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor operates by simultaneously hiding and highlighting features of a particular relationship: “when a target is structured in terms of a particular source, this highlights certain aspects of the target while simultaneously hiding other aspects” (p.303). The conceptual metaphor is therefore similar in definition to Schön’s (1979/1993) generative metaphor, which allows for a “particular kind of SEEING-AS, or the carrying over of

frames from one domain of experience to another” (p.137). Empirical research on policy

metaphors suggests that they can create cognitive frames or “archetypes” that constrain

beliefs (Lau & Schlesinger, 2005).

Frames as an Imprint of Power

According to Entman (1993), a frame in a text can be thought of as an “imprint of

power” because it “registers the identity of the actors and interests that competed to

dominate the text” (p.53). Entman’s characterization of the text as the residue of conflict

implicitly assumes the idea that authorship for a particular text extends beyond the text’s

signatory to various other influential forces that speak through the writer (e.g., Foucault,

1977; Bourdieu, 1991). To use the example of a newspaper article, certainly journalists

influence and frame the content, but so do their sources, editors, publishers, and

governmental, commercial, or political-interest elites.

The competition over media space and content occurs when politicians, public

officials, and interest groups issue press releases, hold press conferences, release

technical studies, engage in open debates, or stage publicity events. For activists, this

includes protest rallies intended to expand the scope of a conflict (as described in

Birkland, 2007, p.70). In covering a story, there is a tendency for journalists to favor

official sources and choose politically vocal celebrities as informal leaders of opinion

currents, which may have a discourse-limiting effect that marginalizes other voices

(Ginneken, 1998, p.91). Subsequently, the editor reviewing the article prior to its publication can reframe or spin the article by choosing or changing its headline and modifying the original content. Empirical studies suggest that editorial framing “tends to

reflect the political views of its readers,” and “doesn’t correlate in any significant way”

with the ideology of its publishers (Wilson, Dilulio & Bose, 2011, p.301). However,

there is a well-documented history of collaboration between publishers and

governmental, political, and corporate elite interests in the selection and framing of news

events (e.g., Snow & Palast, 2003; Stich, 2009). It may be important to note that a

discussion of framing as an imprint of power assumes a certain degree of agency or

margin of freedom possessed by, at the very least, elites and frame entrepreneurs. It does

not, however, address power in terms of the linguistic determinism imposed by cultural metaphors and other tropes that provide a framework for knowledge, as discussed in the section on cultural and metacultural frames. (Note, my use of the term, frame entrepreneur, is an adaptation of John Kingdon’s (1995) concept of a policy entrepreneur,

which assumes some degree of human agency and the presence of a window of

opportunity, which, as applied in this dissertation, translates to discursive space in

general audience media.)

Review of Methods in the Framing Literature

James Hertog and Douglas McLeod (2001) write that frame analysis “has risen to

a place of prominence in political science, sociology, and media studies” and that “this is demonstrated by the many and diverse researchers undertaking framing analysis, the wide array of theoretical approaches and methods employed, and the significant and expanding framing literature” (p.139). Indeed, the analysis of frames and framing takes many forms, and studies that make reference to Goffman’s (1974/1986) original work often include elements from narrative theory, critical theory, and structuralist and poststructuralist semiotics to provide an interpretive framework for respectively describing how and what policy discourses mean, and whose interests they serve. In

some studies there are hypothesized causal dependencies and rules that can be applied

across cases to provide a generalized theory that relates belief systems to other systems

that govern policymaking process (e.g., Weible, Sabatier & McQueen, 2009). Other

studies view social reality as the product of discourse and seek to highlight rhetorical

tropes and double-coded policy symbols (i.e., ideographs), and provide interpretations of

the tacit ideologies and their linkages to power. Studies conducted from this perspective,

conceive the power of frames (or discourses) to be in their ability “to define the terms of

a debate without the audience realizing it is taking place” (Tankard, 2001, p.97). For example, in Ozone Discourses (1994), Karen Litfin explores how the frames of scientific

discourses have a perceived legitimacy that grants scientists and other “knowledge

brokers” authority as interpreters of reality (p.78).

While the number of frames analysis studies has increased in recent years, “the

corresponding methodological literature is scarce” (Koenig, 2006, p.61). A review of

various frame analytic methods prevalent in the literature is provided by James Tankard

(2001), Thomas Koenig (2006), and Jörg Matthes and Matthias Kohring (2008). Each

covers different studies, and classifies them according to different dimensions. The

review of frame analysis methods in this section combines and elaborates on their

insights to present a more comprehensive review. That is, the reviews provided in

Tankard (2001), Koenig (2006), and Matthes and Kohring (2008) were used as a starting

point for this discussion and are elaborated upon and extended in this section.

For the purpose of categorization, studies are grouped according to three modes of

inquiry: interpretive frame analysis, resolutive frame analysis, and regressive frame

analysis, which are adapted from Erich Reck’s (2007) discussion on kinds, or modes, of

analysis. Notably, all three modes can be incorporated into of any single analysis (Reck,

2007).

In the interpretive mode, new information obtained by the researcher is mapped

against an existing theoretical framework for the purpose of comparison, data translation

and transformation. Similar to the way a chemist uses the periodic table of elements to

understand and interpret molecules (Reck, 2007, p.36), the policy researcher also uses a

set of guides for interpretation, which will vary according to the researcher’s interpretive community. For example, just as the statistics-oriented researcher relies on certain

norms, such those concerning the relative and conventional meanings attached to a range

of numerical values associated with a particular statistical test, researchers employing

critical discourse analysis also have certain normative checks, though these are often

derived from social theory and their epistemic community.

Comparatively, the resolutive mode is characterized by decomposition; parsing a

system into its constituent components, with the aim of identifying ontologically basic

elements and structures (Reck, 2007, p.36). For example, in policy analysis, the

resolutive mode is elemental to the analytic-descriptive method (Rein, 1983) of

“disaggregating a social policy or program into parts and examining them one by one”

(Chambers & Wedel, 2005, p.49). A reasonable analogue for comparing the interpretive mode with the resolutive mode would be a comparison between poststructuralism and structuralism, with Roland Barthes’ (1972/1984) analysis of myth as connotation in

Mythologies and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ (1955) Structural Study of Myth serving as respective exemplars.

In the regressive mode, the system or its properties are identified as being contingent on something else. This is exemplified most clearly in statistical approaches to policy research where the aim is to predict which policy option is most likely to succeed and at what cost (e.g., R. Schmidt, 2006, p.301). It is also the mode of historical methods, such Foucauldian genealogies (see Olssen, Codd & O’Neill, 2004, pp.47-51).

Similar to a resolutive analysis, the regressive analysis is reductive, but its purpose is to identify causal relationships and epistemologically basic truths, whereas interpretive

analysis, which is characterized by rephrasal, is used for clarification and “to open up

new avenues of inquiry” (Reck, 2007, p.36).

Interpretive Frame Analyses.

This category of policy framing research is meant to broadly include studies

where the frames are analyzed using researcher reflexivity, and, implicitly or explicitly,

draw from a variety of non-positivist philosophical traditions, such as hermeneutics,

phenomenology, critical theory, and poststructuralism (Yanow, 2009). In terms of

presentation, interpretive frame-analytic studies most generally include some form of

data reduction or summarizing. Studies in this category also include those conducted

within the interpretive-historical mode, including case studies that restructure a policy

story and interpret policy frames through narrative analysis (e.g., Roe, 1994) or frame reflection (e.g., Schön & Rein, 1994).

Framing studies primarily concerned with the ideology of cultural frames often employ a critical discourse analytic (CDA) approach that attempts demythification, as

Barthes (1972/1984) puts it, by separating “the ideological from the phraseological”

(p.168). That is, “the aim of CDA is to uncover the implicit or taken-for-granted values, assumptions, and origins of a seemingly neutral, self-evident, and objective news text and relate it to structures of dominance and power” (Olausson, 2009, p.424). An often cited example of demythification is Michael Billig’s (1995) attention to banal nationalism as a cultural frame.

Ideograph analysis is conceptually similar to CDA, and may even be thought of as a special case of CDA where the focus is specifically ideologically encoded policy

symbols. For example, Tracylee Clarke (1999, 2002) employs the concept of the

ideograph in the analysis of policies affecting American Indian tribes. In “Constructing

Conflict” (1999), Clarke analyzes the “wolf” as an ideographic symbol, at once a perceived as a threat to the economic interests of farmers, and among American Indian tribes linked to ideologies of “cultural resurgence” and “environmental wholeness.” In

“An Ideographic Analysis of Native American Sovereignty in the State of Utah,” Clarke

(2002) analyzes “sovereignty” as an ideograph with regard to Utah Governor Mike

Leavitt’s efforts to prevent the Goshute Tribe from contracting directly with the federal government to store nuclear waste on their reservation. These studies can be viewed as frame analytic in that the focus is on conflicting interpretations and connotative ideological linkages to a single symbol in each case (i.e., wolf and sovereignty, respectively). In contrast, Dana Cloud (2004) analyzes the title of Samuel Huntington’s

(1998) Clash of Civilizations as an ideograph, and examines the “clash of civilizations” between the West and Middle East as a pretext to the U.S. War on Terrorism. In this

study, Cloud’s aim is to reify the abstract idea of a “clash of civilizations” with concrete

examples found in texts and visual imagery. Although these and other studies may be

epistemologically informed by different nonpositivist traditions, methodologically they

usually share in common a research strategy that relies on the “logic and credibility of argumentation, backed up by quotes from the texts” (Carvalho & Burgess, 2005, p.1461 and cited in Olausson, 2009, p.425).

Notably, not all discourse analyses or narrative analyses relate to frames or framing, or are even considered interpretive analyses. Alternative conceptualizations are

presented, for example, from the various contributors to Narrative Analysis (Daiute &

Lightfoot, 2004), and in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Schiffrin, Tannen &

Hamilton, 2003), respectively. This section concerns only those that are interpretive modes of inquiry relevant to frame analysis, such as where narrative analysis and discourse analysis are incorporated into a frame analytic paradigm (e.g., Pan & Kosicki,

1993; Segvic, 2005; Skillington, 1997), or, conversely, where framing is conceptualized as elemental to the narrative (e.g., Roe, 2004; Shanahan et al., 2008), since structural approaches to narrative analysis “in significant part can be thought of as an approach to problem framing” (Fischer, 2003, p.172).

Interpretive frame analysis has been criticized from a behavioralist research standpoint for it methodological ambiguity (Matthes & Kohring, 2008; Tankard, 2001).

In one sample of studies, Matthes and Kohring (2008) observed that most authors offered little with regard to how the frames were identified. The frames “emerged from the analysis” in one study, “were found” from a “deep reading” in another, and in one study

“there was no hint at all about how the frames were extracted” (Matthes & Kohring,

2008, p.259). Although not all of the studies they reviewed are examples of policy

research, their findings can certainly be generalized to studies of public policy in which

frames are reflexively identified by the researcher in an unsystematic manner, such that

the researcher’s conclusions may be as idiosyncratic as they are impressionistic. Chock

(1995), for example, conducted a frame analysis of “talk about immigration” from

congressional transcripts with the research strategy of “combing through the discursive

surround of an event…[and] imagining a world of discourses that act as if they are self-

contained and natural mirrors of their own world, but that are really bearers of their own

incompletion and tendentiousness” (p.167). Similarly, Tracey Skillington’s (1997) analysis of rhetorical frames in papers presented at a conference on waste management offers little in the way of methodological description: “After an examination of the

linguistic constitution of the papers, [the frames] eventually emerged” (p.497).

These “lone scholars,” as Tankard (2001) describes them, who employ

interpretive frame analysis often acknowledge the interpretivist subjectivity of their

approach and make no claims as to validity of their findings. Matthes and Kohring

(2008) write that “although these studies without doubt contribute to the accumulation of

knowledge in the field, scholars often have been inattentive to these difficulties, and

consequently, methodological clarity has been unnecessarily impeded” (p.260). That is,

the issue of methodological rigor is not with the subjectivity of the researcher, nor is it

with the norms of the interpretive community, but, rather, with the degree of

systematization and transparency of the research process.

Resolutive Frame Analyses.

The research process in the resolutive mode is characterized by decomposition,

and its purpose is to show basic elements or structures (Reck, 2007). Most generally, the

researcher theorizes a multidimensional structure for a frame, and then parses and codes a

text according to its constituent frame elements. The resolutive mode can be nested

within the interpretive mode of analysis, as with qualitative content analysis, where open

thematic coding can be highly impressionistic (Kerlinger, 1964). Examples of frame

analysis conducted within the resolutive mode include linguistic frame analysis, the

manual holistic approach, wholly quantitative frame analysis, and the deductive

approach.

Linguistic frame analysis.

Linguistic frame analysis, where the frames are identified through highly

structured content analysis, exemplifies research conducted mainly within a resolutive

rather than interpretive mode of analysis. Frames are identified through an “analysis of

the selection, placement, and structure of specific words and sentences in a text” (Matthes

& Kohring, 2008, p.260). In linguistic frame analytic studies, the syntactical unit of analysis can be the sentence or paragraph, though from the work reviewed here it is most typically a complete news article concerning a policy issue. Examples of these types of studies include Robert Entman’s (1991) comparative analysis of U.S. and international coverage of the KAL and Iran air incidents; Frank Esser and Paul D’Angelo’s (2003) content analysis of campaign coverage on network news, and Zhongdang Pan and Gerald

Kosicki’s (1993) research strategy for framing analysis.

Notably, Pan and Kosicki (1993) distinguish structural dimensions of frames that can be empirically assessed: syntax, script, theme, and rhetoric. The syntactical structures are “the stable patterns of the arrangement of words or phrases into sentences”

(p.59). Most news stories follow an inverted pyramid structure of headline, lead, episode, background, and closure. The headline is the most powerful framing device in the syntactical structure, then the lead, etc. (Pan & Kosicki, 1993, p.59). The script is defined by a set of rules or story grammars, adopted Rumelhart’s (1975) theory that, like the grammar of a sentence, a story has set of rules that “can produce descriptions of

72 stories which have never been told but would be considered acceptable” (Meyer & Rice,

2002, p.338). The basic story grammar of a news article is the generic who, what, when where, why and how (Pan & Kosicki, 1993, p.60). Thematic structure usually consists of the main body and a summary, represented by the headline, lead, or conclusion. The main body contains episodes, background information, and quotes, from which subthemes may be interpreted (p.61). Rhetorical structures are often key framing devices

(Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). These frame signification devices include metaphors, exemplars, catchphrases, depictions, and visual images employed to invoke mental images, increase salience of a point, and increase the vividness of a report (Pan &

Kosicki, 1993, p.61).

Somewhat similarly, Teun van Dijk (1985, pp.85-88) presents a schematic structure or story grammar for news articles that consists of a summary identified from the headline and lead sentence; main event or episodes of events; background information, such as the historical, political, or social context or conditions for the described events; and comments, including quotations and verbal reactions, such as conclusions, expectations, speculations about the events.

Structural frameworks, exemplified here by Pan and Kosicki (1993) and Van Dijk

(1985) allow for a uniform approach to data reduction and the identification of frames from text. Researchers employing such an approach construct a data matrix for every single news text, and within this matrix, the signifying elements for each proposition are analyzed.

Other structured content analysis studies tend to fall into what Tankard (2001)

calls “the list of frames approach” (p.101-102). The process is generalized as follows:

make the range of possible frames explicit; put the various possible frames in a manifest

list; develop keywords, catchphrases and symbols to help detect each frame; use the

frames in the list as categories in a content analysis, and code articles or other kinds of content into these categories. The “list of frames” approach is based on the definition of a frame as “a central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration” (Tankard, 2001, p.100). Tankard identifies eleven framing mechanisms, or points of focus, for identifying framing: headlines and kickers; subheads; photographs; photo captions; leads (the starting sentences of news stories); selection of sources or affiliations; selection of quotes; pull quotes (quotes that are blown up in size for emphasis); logos (graphic identification of the particular series an article belongs to); statistics, charts, and graphs; and concluding statements or paragraphs of articles (2001, p.101).

This approach to measurement was influenced by the research on agenda-setting by Max McCombs and others. That is, Tankard (2001) conceptualized framing as a list of frames similar to the way McCombs thought of agenda setting as a list of issues. While agenda setting research focused on which issues were covered, Tankard conceptualized framing research as dealing with how an issue or event is portrayed in the news. Tankard

(2001, p.101) contends that “this approach makes the rules for identifying frames explicit and takes the subjectivity out of frame identification.” However, the subjectivity at

various stages is debatable, and, more importantly, there is no explanation for the

procedures used to develop keywords or how the range of frames is first identified.

Another approach to measuring media frames is to conceive of framing as

involving various elements or dimensions of stories. Tankard (2001) calls this the multidimensional concept approach to frame analysis. The multidimensional concept approach “combines traditional story-presentation variables that are typically looked at in content analysis studies…with story content variables” (Tankard, 2001, pp.101-102), which, in Tankard’s example, included the different terms used to refer to a fetus in an abortion story and the location of the article within its newspaper. In this study, the story was used as the coding unit, and six frames were initially identified, but to achieve an inter-rater reliability of 89%, these were reduced to two; those favorable to abortion, and those unfavorable to abortion.

Using a multidimensional concept approach, on the same issue, Jennifer Swenson

(1990; reviewed in Tankard, 2001, p.99) coded eight dimensions that defined story framing: the writer’s gender; placement of the article (e.g., front page, editorial, etc.); terms used to refer to the pro-choice group; terms used to refer to the pro-choice group; whether the woman’s or the fetus’s rights are considered more important; the morality orientation of the article; discussion of when life begins; and terms used to refer to the fetus. Instead of inter-rater reliability, Swenson assessed reliability using a test-retest method, where the same coder would code the material at two different times. The reported rate agreement was nearly 100% (Tankard, 2001, p.99).

Matthes and Kohring (2008, p.260) note the major advantage of the linguistic

approach to frame analysis is the systematic and thorough analysis of news texts.”

However, Esser and D’Angelo (2003, p.624) write that “the inordinate complexity of this

method makes a standardized frame analysis with large text samples rather difficult to

accomplish,” and that “it remains a bit unclear how all these features are finally woven

together to signify a frame” (cited in Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p.624). Van Gorp (2010)

argues that many of the presentation variables coded in such analyses are really

formatting devices and not framing devices.

Manual Holistic Frame Analysis.

In the manual holistic approach, frames are identified through qualitative analysis

of a small sample of texts and then coded as holistic variables in manual content analysis.

According to Gamson and Modigliani (1989), every policy issue has a culture of its own,

consisting of “metaphors, catchphrases, visual images, moral appeals, and other symbolic

devices,” which may change over time (p.1). These cultural indicators are often

organized by policy actors into interpretive packages for media presentation. Gamson

and Modigliani (1989) refer to these as media packages, though Van Gorp has since used

the term frame package (Van Gorp, 2007). For most policy issues, there will be multiple,

competing packages that present “a symbolic contest over which interpretation will prevail” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.2). Gamson and Modigliani (1989) contend that these packages have an internal structure, with the frame as its central organizing idea for supplying the meaning of relevant events and suggesting what is at issue; the media

package “can be summarized in a signature matrix that states the frame, the range of

positions, and the eight different types of signature elements that suggest this core in a

condensed manner” (p.4). The eight signature elements include five framing devices: metaphors, exemplars, catchphrases, depictions, and visual images, which suggest “how

to think about the issue”; and three reasoning devices: causal analyses (called “roots”), consequences, and appeals to principles or morals, which “justify what should be done about it” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3).

The media package approach to frame analysis involves what amounts to a paragraph or short summary statement developed by the researcher that consists of paraphrases, key terms, and quoted sentences from different sources. In Van Gorp’s

(2010) application of this process, open coding, axial coding and selective coding (per

Strauss & Corbin, 1998), is repeated and compared with preliminary findings (per Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) comparative method). Gamson and Modigliani (1989) argue that this kind of package “offers a number of different condensing symbols that suggest the core frame and positions in shorthand, making it possible to display the package as a whole with a deft metaphor, catchphrase, or other symbolic device” (p.3). In their study,

Gamson and Modigliani (1989) used this approach to examine the frame of the discourse among nuclear power advocates, and found nuclear power was often described within a

“progress” frame. They identified such story categories as “underdeveloped nations can especially benefit from peaceful uses of nuclear energy,” and “nuclear power is necessary for maintaining economic growth and our way of life” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p11). The coders looked for these specific categories rather than making a more global

77 determination based on the media package, and, using this approach, they achieved 80% coder agreement reliability.

Matthes and Kohring (2008, p.260) identify Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad

(1998), Meyer (1995), Simon and Xenos (2000); and Segvic (2005) as other examples of research of this type. In these studies, the researchers selected a small sample of articles to generate a few working frames, which were then defined in a codebook and coded in a quantitative content analysis. Matthes and Kohring (2008) note the credibility of such studies hinges on how well the process of generating frames is explicated. Of the studies cited here, neither Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad (1998) nor Segvic (2005) explained how frames were generated in their analyses. Matthes and Kohring (2008) note that

“from a methodological point of view the problem is the same as with the interpretive- hermeneutic approach: Without naming the criteria for the identification of frames, one runs the risk of extracting researcher frames, not media frames” (p.260). Another challenge with this approach is that once the frames are defined in the small sample of articles, the researchers develop their own “coder frame” that lends itself to the “tendency to press an article into an already existing frame category,” and might make it difficult to observe the emergence of new frames (Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p.261).

Wholly Quantitative Frame Analysis.

The wholly quantitative approach is exemplified by the “frame mapping” technique described by M. Mark Miller and Bonnie Riechert (2001a, 2001b). The theory behind this method is based on the linguistic frame-analytic approach described by

Entman (1993) in which frames exist as structural units of text. Frame mapping in this

application is based on comparisons of the frequency and relative proximity of co-

occurring substantive terms in verbatim text. The researcher uses specialized software

(VBPro and VBMap) to identify and select “key substantive terms” according to their

frequency and location in the syntactical units (e.g., sentences, paragraphs, or articles).

The “mapping” aspect of this research strategy is based on a term-by-term cosine coefficient matrix from which principle component analysis or hierarchical cluster analysis can be used for data reduction, grouping together syntactical units according to their frames. That is, frames are identified according to key word frequency and relative proximity of co-occurring terms. Words that appear most frequently and occur near each other in a syntactical unit are clustered together as representing the same frame. For example, if the terms “purified” and “water” were found in sequence within the same syntactical unit (a sentence, paragraph, etc.), and their co-occurrence were repeated often enough, a “purified water” frame would be interpreted from the patterns in the data, and the clustering algorithms would group together the syntactical units with a “purified water” frame for data reduction and simplification or summarizing purposes. Critics of this approach argue that it better identifies story topics than it does frames (Carragee &

Roefs, 2004). This criticism, however, is based on applications of “frame mapping” to content selected according to general query terms that would encompass an enormous variety of topics.

Frame mapping with VBPro and VBMap has been used to study framing on a variety of policy issues, including pesticides (Miller & Riechert, 1994), wetlands regulation (Riechert, 1996), hate speech (Miller & Andsager, 1997), and silicone breast

implants (Andsager & Smiley, 1998) (listed in Miller & Riechert, 2001a, p.115).

Another program, CATPAC, uses a semantic network clustering algorithm. Examples of

studies that apply CATPAC for content analysis include Priscilla Murphy’s (2001)

analysis of framing in congressional testimony on nicotine addiction; Priscilla Murphy

and Michael Maynard’s (2000) analysis of how government and interest groups frame the

issue of genetic testing; Yan Tian and Concetta Stewart’s (2005) media frame analysis of the SARS crisis (2005); and Donnalyn Pompper’s (2004) analysis of how various print media frame environmental risk.

One of the advantages to this approach cited by Matthes and Kohring (2008) is the relatively high reliability of the results. Because the frames are identified by computer algorithms that assess word frequency and location in the text, the process could be repeated and the same frames would emerge. The researcher’s subjectivity and interpretation do come into play a various junctures in the process, but the approach is highly systematic, and any point this process can be revisited.

Critiques of frame mapping include that of Carragee and Roefs (2004), who suggest the frames identified are actually “story topics” and not frames. Hertog and

McLeod (2001) argue that the frequency of words is not necessarily an indicator of whether they are central to the meaning of a text. Koenig (2006, p.65) writes that “pure keyword measurement offers greater reproducibility… [and] is also much faster in the coding of large data sets,” but its weakness is that “it remains the most rigid and least interpretative technique.” One consideration along the same line of thought as that of

Hertog and McLeod (2001) and Koenig (2006) is the role of metacommunication in

creating the frame. Goffman (1974/1986) notes, for example, that quotation marks,

which can be used ironically to signify incredulity are “one of the less gentle framing

devices available to the press” (p.109). The frame may not be the key word, but possibly

the incredulity or irony signified by the quotation marks.

Matthes and Kohring (2008, p.261) identify Jasperson, Shah, Watts, Faber, and

Fan (1998), and Shah, Watts, Domke, and Fan (2002) as two examples of studies that

employed syntactical approaches that “have advanced computer-assisted content analysis

by moving beyond the grouping of words.” These studies created rule-based approaches

to frame identification using the software program, Infotrend. In the study by Jasperson

et al. (1998) a set of rules was set to sort the paragraphs of stories on the federal budget

according to four preconceived frames: talk, fight, impasse, or crisis. For example:

“Talk” frames were…characterized in terms of measured discussions among Washington elites…they were defined by phrases and word combinations indicating such characterizations as reflected by the word or word fragments “budget,” “deficit,” “politic,” or “fiscal,” in combination with “talk,” “negotiate,” “debate,” “resolve,” “agreement,” “discuss” [etc.]…Rules were created to eliminate paragraphs containing phrases such as “good deal ,” “great deal,”… “talk radio,” and “talk show.” (Jasperson, 1998, p.221)

The crux of their study, however, is not that they created rule based assignments for sorting paragraphs into frames, but that they were able to correlate the media frames with data from public opinion polls to create an ideodynamic model that attempts to predict public approval based on media coverage.

Dhavan Shah et al. (2002) used the same general ideodynamic modeling approach to analyze media effects and explain Clinton’s public approval in spite of the Monica

Lewinsky scandal. These authors used valence framing, scoring paragraphs as either

favorable or unfavorable to Clinton. They then subdivided the content based on presence

economic content; and then by the organizing frames of “Clinton behavior,”

“conservative attack,” and “liberal response,” according to syntactical rules similar to those described Jasperson et al. (1998). Random samples of the content were manually coded and compared with the Infotrend-assisted coding as a reliability check.

The difference in the sophistication of using Infotrend compared to dictionary-

based approaches, such as frame mapping with VBPro or CATPAC, is in the complexity

of the syntactic rules that can capture the frames. However, a more important difference

overlooked by Matthes and Kohring (2008) in their assessment is that both VBPro and

CATPAC are text-driven inductive approaches to framing, where the frames that emerge

from the text are based on the frequency criterion, whereas with the Infotrend studies, the

frames are preconceived and the syntactic rules, though sophisticated, are principally a

mechanism for sorting. That is, Jasperson et al. (1998) and Shah et al. (2002) apply a

deductive approach closer to the examples in the next section. Recent advances in other

statistics-based approaches, such as self-learning Bayesian networks, neural networks,

and latent semantic analysis, have increased their potential for frame analysis, although

these solutions have the disadvantage of being “black boxes,” in that they rely on complex programming logic that cannot be adjusted, except by a skilled programmer

(IBM, 2010, p.6).

Deductive Approach.

Matthes and Kohring (2008) note several studies that “theoretically derived

frames from the literature and code them in standard content analysis” (p.262). Examples

of these studies include Dimitrova, Kaid, Williams, and Trammell (2005), de Vreese,

Peter, and Semetko (2001), Igartua, Cheng, and Muniz, (2005), and Semetko and

Valkenburg (2000). Matthes and Kohring (2008, p.262) summarize the seminal deductive study of Semetko and Valkenburg:

Semetko and Valkenburg postulate five generic frames: conflict, human interest, economic consequences, morality, and responsibility. More specifically, each news story was analyzed through a series of 20 questions to which the coder had to answer “yes” or “no.” For instance, the economic consequence frame was measured with questions such as “Is there a reference to economic consequences?” (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000, p.100). A factor analysis of those 20 items confirmed the postulated frames.

The same five frames were tested by Igartua et al. (2005), but their factor analysis extracted six factors. Dimitrova et al. (2005) coded six predefined frames, which were different from those of the other two studies. This is not all that surprising since factor analysis interpretations can be highly variable (Gorsuch, 1983, pp.370-372). One of the key limitations of the deductive approach is that the frames are identified from theory, and do not emerge from the data. This limits the possibilities of the frames to only those already selected beforehand.

Summary of Methods Surveyed.

In summary, the applied methods described in the literature are representative of the vast number of studies that have contributed to theories of frames and how they can be analyzed, though all have been on the receiving end of the stick when it comes to

critiques regarding methodological concerns. The hermeneutic and manual holistic

approaches attempt to expose the hidden cultural meanings of a text, but the findings may

reflect the predispositions of the researcher and such interpretations may not be broadly

83 shared. The computer-aided approaches provide more consistent results, but have limitations with regard to the meanings of polysemic terms and context. With the deductive approach, the frames are preconceived and therefore limited by such preconceptions. Van Gorp (2007) notes the frame of a text can be difficult to code because it is abstract. It remains unclear which elements in the text constitute the frame.

The manual holistic approach and the hermeneutic approach share the same methodological problems of “frames by fiat”; only the linguistic approach relies on an extensive description of linguistic elements; many studies apply both inductive and deductive strategies; and some studies, like Lind and Salo (2002) combine deductive frame analysis with a dictionary-based method similar to M. Miller’s (1997) frame mapping (Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p.262).

CHAPTER 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURES

This dissertation applies a mixed methods research strategy for frame analysis that includes two components: a case narrative analysis and text analytic frame mapping.

The case narrative analysis is loosely based on Schön and Rein’s (1994) epistemic framework for frame-reflective and frame-critical analysis. This is undertaken as an interpretive-historical mode of analysis using a variety of electronic documents as source material, with an emphasis on the role of signs and symbols in influencing the adoption of a policy innovation relative to external and extralinguistic forces. Text analytic frame mapping is a strategy for stakeholder analysis that employs IBM SPSS text analytics software to identify the discourse participants, key actors, and organizations in the media- constructed reality developed through news articles, feature stories, editorials, letters to the editor, and op-ed columns, and connect these entities to their expressed statements as indicators of their beliefs and sentiments, and relate them to others in frame alignment.

These methods are applied to the case example of indirect potable wastewater reuse in the city of San Diego, California, where the highly controversial idea of treating and reusing wastewater to augment the city’s potable water supply has been in the works since the 1970s. Over the years, the plan for indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation has risen onto, receded from, and returned to the agendas of public officials, politicians, the media, and the public. The impasse concerning the proposed reservoir augmentation project began in the mid-1990s, when the controversy became

widely referenced by the media as the “toilet-to-tap” policy debate (e.g., Bailey, 2003;

Balint, Dec. 7, 1997, 1998; Bauder, 1997; Braun, 1998; 2007; Lee, 2005, 2010; Jenkins,

1997, 2005; LaRue, 1998; Morgan, 2000; Roth, 1998; Simmons, 2001). To date, the treated effluent produced by the advanced water treatment demonstration projects have only been used for nonpotable applications, mainly landscape irrigation. Indirect Potable

Reuse in San Diego, therefore, represents a policy-object-in-the-making, still subject to the “empirical uncertainties and normative ambiguities of an ever-changing world”

(Hoppe, 1999, p.207). The institutional designers that originally sponsored the reservoir augmentation project—a handful of San Diego City Council committee members, water officials, and scientists—created a policy object that was introduced into a larger policy arena, the city of San Diego. From there, other actors, including area residents, politicians, government officials, academics, environmentalists, and journalists, responded to the policy object, guided by their own interests and frames. However, policy antagonists have failed to reach a final consensus on whether or not to implement the reservoir augmentation project. This is, in large part, a consequence of having focused on different facts, having interpreted the same facts in different ways, and having dismissed evidence that supports counterviews to their policy arguments. The impasse is, therefore, more than a policy disagreement. It qualifies as what Schön and Rein (1994) describe as an intractable policy controversy.

Case Selection

This particular case was selected as an “instrumental case study,” intended to

“provide insight in to an issue” (Stake, 2005, p.445). In providing the case history

narrative analysis, “the case still is looked at in depth, its contexts scrutinized, and its ordinary activities detailed, but…the choice of case is made to advance understanding of an external interest” (Stake, 2005, p.445), namely the frames that can be interpreted from the source material and the importance of the symbolic realm in policymaking. Using

“information-oriented selection” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p.230), the case was chosen on the

basis of my expectations about its information content. I also considered that the case might be an extreme case, which according to Flyvbjerg (2006), “can be well-suited for getting a point across in an especially dramatic way,” as often occurs for well-known

case studies such as Freud’s “Wolf-Man” and in Foucault’s application of Bentham’s

“Panopticon” (p.229). That is, knowing that the proposal for indirect potable wastewater

reuse has long been an intractable policy controversy for the city of San Diego, I believed the case would offer the extremes of “grandstanding politicians, speculative economics, and the complex interplay” between government and its constituents (see Stocking &

Leonard, 1990, p.42 as cited in Hannigan, 1995, p.73). The city’s plan for the indirect potable reuse of treated wastewater is both a public perception issue and an emerging technology issue, which, when combined, creates a political issue and a media issue

(LaRue, March 6, 1995). The discourses concerning this case are rich with ideographs, symbolic arguments, and dramatic nonverbal symbolic displays that are acted-out for a public audience. The narrative concerning this particular policy innovation has the

sensational values of oddity, controversy, conflict, and danger. These qualities make this

case a good example for the identification of frames in policy debate, and, in particular,

frames in media coverage (Altheide & Snow, 1979; Hertog & McLeod, 1995).

Case Narrative Analysis

The case narrative analysis is an interpretive case history concerning a policy innovation that incorporates the contextual elements of water politics, technology, economics, public opinion, government and the media. The narrative analysis recapitulates the controversies over the city of San Diego’s proposal to discharge highly treated wastewater into its second largest drinking water reservoir. It also includes the historical developments leading to the city’s policy proposal, including the quieter pre- controversial periods during the project’s early development, “when the public trusted the experts or governments to make the right decision and therefore did not usually participate in or challenge project decisions” (Po, Kaercher & Nancarrow, 2003, p.3).

The history of this proposed policy is presented in the context of its broader policy environment, which cuts across all levels and branches of government, and includes interrelated water policy discourses involving regional, environmental, agricultural, and pro-development interests. The narrative analytic approach taken here is one that emphasizes the policy actors and groups with competing interests, values, and priorities, and interprets from the discourse key ideographs and frames.

The case history highlights what can be considered key narrations, the particular word choices and micro-discourses of narrating agents (Fischer, 2003, p.161), selected to identify the frames that controlled both the explanatory hypotheses of the policy actors, and the range of solutions they were willing to consider (per Lindblom & Cohen, 1979).

However, the case history is not intended as a micro-frames analysis exclusively concerned with the rhetorical frames of policy actors (as described in Johnston, 1995).

Rather, to tell the policy story effectively, emphasis is given to the various policy actors,

organizations, and “the changes in the structure of situations and in the positions

occupied by internal actors” (Fischer, 2003, p.164). That is, the case history emphasizes

“the people and events that ‘cause’ social changes, relegating public discourses to a

supporting role in the story” (DeLuca, 1999). The overarching policy narrative, the

macro-discourse of “how the story plays out in the text” (Herman & Vervaeck, 2005,

pp.41-42) is of primary interest, beyond the frames of the micro-discourses.

Epistemic Framework.

The case narrative analysis draws mainly from Schön and Rein’s (1994) epistemic

framework for frame-reflective and frame-critical analysis through an interpretive- historical mode of research. The history of the case is outlined and analyzed as a policy dialectic (Schön & Rein, 1994), which allows for a diachronic analysis of policy

development and the frames that guided the policy process. Schön and Rein’s (1994)

concept of policy dialectic is not limited to the traditional Hegelian model of thesis-

antithesis-synthesis, which they consider to be a special case of the “historical,

transformative, and conflictual dimensions of the policymaking process” (p.80). Rather, the policy dialectic encompasses the full “drama in which contention among institutional actors in a policy arena combines with the actors’ adaptation to shifts in a larger policy environment so as to effect, over time, the transformation of a policy object” (Schön &

Rein, 1994, pp.80-81).

The policy dialectic considers the fluidity of both the goals of the policy, and the means of achieving them; they are developed through “deliberation and political

argument, in a processes of ‘framing and naming’ (Schön, 1983) which may repeatedly unsettle and attack apparently dominant concepts and frames of meaning” (Hoppe, 1999, p.207). For example, in the case of water policy, “naming water as a mineral, as a public good, or as a commodity fundamentally changes its nature, shifting access among citizens, governments, and private firms” (Sementelli, 2008, p.4). That is, “by structuring the perception which social agents have of the social world, the act of naming helps to establish the structure of the world, and does so all the more significantly the more widely it is recognized” (Bourdieu, 1991, p.105). The discourses of policy actors are understood as “emerging from their relationships with antagonists, who are co- constructing reality in often unpredictable ways” (Fischer, 2003, p.164).

The policy object is conceptualized as the translation of the policy frames, the belief systems, of the institutional designers, which becomes structured and restructured over time by interaction and competition among stakeholders within a policy setting, and also by larger social, economic, and political forces (see also Heclo, 1974; Sabatier &

Jenkins-Smith, 1993). The policy dialectic is, therefore, “at once a frame contest and a political struggle” (Schön & Rein, 1994, p.81), in which a malleable policy-object-in-the- making is shaped and reshaped by various policy actors in proximal and distal environments. This notion suggests that policy change results from the cumulative effect of “policy-oriented learning,” including adaptation to environmental stimuli (Freeman,

2006).

Materials and Procedures.

In providing an interpretive-historical narrative analysis I am essentially telling a

story about the development of a contestable policy innovation, and in doing so have

constructed a version of the “San Diego” policy arena that is populated with the people,

objects and events I interpreted from source material as being important to the story, after

having sifted through a much larger volume of documents, records, articles, websites, and

other electronic sources. The goal here is not a historiography that transforms the

monuments of history into a document, but, rather, the goal is to produce a policy

narrative in which elements of historical documents are selected, grouped, made relevant,

and placed in relation to one another (see Foucault, 1972/2002, p.8). This is done in

bricoleur fashion, using materials that are publicly and electronically available, with data

obtained from a variety of sources, including newspaper articles, oral histories,

government reports, court records, city council meeting minutes, legislation, journal

articles, conference papers, books, theses and dissertations, and Internet websites. The

resulting narrative of the policy dialect can be thought of as bricolage, a “reflexive, collage-like creation that represents the researcher’s images, understandings, and interpretations of the phenomenon under analysis” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p.4).

The sampling strategy for attaining these materials was to use query terms and

Internet search engines to obtain relevant documents from a variety of websites, portals and databases, including those operated by government agencies, academic institutions, libraries, nonprofit organizations, and commercial enterprises. The process was strategic, iterative and self-reflexive, and employed until I believed I had achieved a probable

91 saturation point at which additional materials appeared not to provide new information of substantive research value. Research notes on these materials were prepared using word processing software (Microsoft® Word 2010), and indexed with a descriptive heading and detailed bibliographic information (as per McDowell, 2002; McNabb, 2004). These notes were synthesized and organized in a narrative format for the case history presentation.

In the examination and critique of these materials, attention was given to the degree of immediacy of the materials to the phenomena of interest (as per Benjamin,

2006). Primary sources, such as government records and firsthand accounts were preferred for establishing factual descriptions of events, such as the date of an occurrence, the parties involved, etc. Secondary sources, including news articles, were sought to “provide important insights and conceptual development not available elsewhere” (Powell, 1997, p.168). However, differentiating between primary and secondary sources was a highly contextualized process in that the referenced material was often a primary source for some information and a secondary source for other information. For example, San Diego City Council resolutions are primary sources for what they resolve to accomplish, but they are also secondary sources for the background information that is often included to provide a context and rationale for the current action.

In this sense, they serve an indexical function for additional historical investigation.

These official documents and records are synthesized with media accounts, which are also primary and secondary sources (e.g., they are primary sources of direct quotes from

key actors, but secondary sources for their background information, summaries and

interpretations).

The research strategy of synthesizing primary sources, and comparing and

integrating secondary source information was accomplished to “help round out the setting

or fill in the gaps between primary sources of information” (Powell, 1997, p.169). For example, an important event in the case history occurred on November 14, 2007, when

San Diego Mayor, Jerry Sanders, vetoed the City Council’s resolution to initiate an advanced water purification demonstration project as a test model for indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation. The primary source document related to this event is a digitally scanned copy of the resolution (R-303095) with Mayor Sanders’ signature on the veto line. This record also serves as a secondary source for events leading to the resolution and its rationale, such as a previous resolution (R-29878), passed in 2004, which directed the city manager to initiate a feasibility study for indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation, and the implementation strategies recommended following the

City Council’s acceptance and review of the city’s 2006 Water Reuse Study, which included a demonstration project and a community education and outreach program to promote public acceptance. An article in the San Diego Union-Tribune reporting on the

Mayor’s veto, provides an intersubjectively shared frame for the story: “Sanders said he

opposes the program because it would cost too much and require a water rate increase

after rates have already gone up twice this year” (Hall, 2007). This source is primary in providing direct quotes from key actors, but secondary in its review of background

information. These sources are necessarily synthesized for interpreting a sequence of action moments as constituting a contextually situated event.

Frame Mapping

This dissertation proposes that a policy analyst interested in mapping the

topography of frames and power in ideographic space can accomplish such a task using

text analytic software. This is a resolutive mode of analysis with an objective being data

reduction and summarization. The frame mapping technique presented here includes two

research strategies, each intended for different sections of a newspaper. One is applied to

newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, and the op-ed column, where the identity of the

author is generally known, and the goal is to map the frame of the argument or opinion

expressed and to identify patterns across sample of cases. The other application is

intended for news stories presented as narratives, where the identity of the key actors is

not initially known to the researcher.

Frame mapping, in this sense, can be thought of as a special form of stakeholder

analysis in which text analytic software is used to identify competing stakeholders, the

frames of their arguments, their influence on news, and patterns of change in frames

throughout the policy process (M. Miller, 1997). The relative advantage of using text

analytic software over content analysis with open coding is that the linguistics-based software provides for more consistent identification of key concepts and word patterns that can be extracted and classified into categories (IBM, 2011). IBM SPSS Text

Analytics for Surveys (version 4.0.1) was used to identify the actors and interests that dominated the controversy over reservoir augmentation with treated wastewater, and the

frames underlying their policy positions. The text analytics software includes linguistic

resources, such as a part of speech coding, and built-in libraries, each consisting of one or

more dictionaries of type classifications of concepts, or equivalent classes of terms.

The computational linguistics-based approach to Frame Mapping is

epistemologically compatible with the Saussurean tradition of semiotics, where the

materiality of a sign is thought to be ancillary to its meaning: For example, as Saussure’s

editors described in the Course in General Linguistics (1916/1983), “whether I write in

black or white, in incised characters or in relief with a pen or a chisel—none of that is of

any importance for the meaning” (quoted in Chandler, 2002, p.51). However, beginning

with Voloshinov (1929/1986), semioticians have challenged the Saussurean idea that

“material embodiment” is unimportant to the meaning of a signification device

(Chandler, 2002, p.52). In this dissertation, for example, as will be explicated further in

Chapter V, various elements central to the frame mapping analyses are signified through

variation in font and the use of brackets. Brackets are used to indicate [concepts],

meaning words that represent equivalent classes of terms; words representing sets of

semantically related concepts, called , are indicated by pointy bracket enclosure; words representing categories, or codes for sets of linguistic elements (concepts, types, patterns, and rules), are indicated by italics (as are conventional in IBM, 2011). The medium itself is metacommunicative and may connote a tone for interpretation that may be considered part of a frame, similar to Tankard’s (2001, p.99) example of how an ornate hand-carved wooden frame provides a different tone for viewing a picture than mass-produced metal one. The idea of the “material embodiment” of a text extends

95 beyond its medium to other material characteristics, such visual images (Gamson &

Modigliani, 1989; Pan & Kosicki, 1993) and formatting devices, including changes in font type, size, style (e.g., emboldened or italicized) that operate through connotation

(Hertog & McLeod, 2001; Koenig, 2006; Tankard, 2001). This does not present a limitation for a computational linguistics-based approach to frame mapping since the presentation variables that might be coded under a more semiotic approach to frame analysis (e.g., Kress & Van Leewen, 2006) relate to the media frames intended for the audience and not the cognitive frames of policy actors or the thematic frames of an episodic policy narrative.

Local Newspaper as a Data Source

Public discourse is “public communication about topics and actors related to either some particular policy domain or to the broader interests and values that are engaged” (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards & Rucht, 2002, p.9). But, rather than a single public discourse, it is more useful to think of sets of fragmented discourses that interact in complex ways, and are promoted through a variety of forums (Gamson & Modigliani,

1989, p.2; Foucault, 1980, p.85; Schön & Rein, 1994, p.64). As Gamson and Modigliani note:

There is the specialist’s discourse using journals and other print [or digital] media aimed at those whose professional lives involve the issue. There is the largely oral discourse used by officials who are directly involved in decision-making roles on the issue and by those who attempt to influence them. There is the challenger discourse, providing packages that are intended to mobilize their audiences for some form of collective action… (p.3)

The discourses of policy actors may also unfold at “the federal legislature, the courts, federal and local bureaucracies, political parties, and academia” (Schön & Rein, 1994,

p.64). Accordingly, “texts containing stakeholder frames may be gathered from a variety

of sources” (Miller & Riechert, 2001b, p.64).

General audience media represent only some of these venues, and perhaps not

always the most important ones for predicting policy outcomes (Gamson & Modigliani,

1989, p.3). However, the ideas and language used in general audience media can be

referenced from any and all other forums, with journalists “frequently quoting and paraphrasing their sources” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3). Because the media

“constantly make available suggested meanings and are the most accessible in a media- saturated society such as the United States, their content can be used as the most important indicator of the general issue culture” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3).

Media scholars consider that—similar to the way the concept of public discourse is a shorthand expression describing complex sets of fragmented discourses—the concept

of “the media,” when used to describe “general audience media,” represents a variety of communication channels, including television, film, radio, various types of print media, such as newspapers and magazines, and, more recently, digital media, such as Internet websites, and mobile phone text messaging services (Croteau et al., 2011). The idea behind the reification of “mass media,” as if were a single entity is the “well-established assumption of a high degree of redundancy across the news agendas of individual media”

(McCombs, 2004, p.48). Accordingly, many investigations in agenda setting and issue framing will use a single medium as a surrogate for the news agenda (McCombs, 2004, p.48).

However, McCombs (2004) notes that with regard to agenda setting there can be

differences across media. Newspapers are thought to be more influential than other types

of media—at least half the time with national issues, and almost always with local issues

(McCombs, 2004, p.50). This has been borne out repeatedly in empirical studies since the 1970s, beginning with Palmgreen and Clarke (1977). McCombs’ reasoning is that:

If we briefly consider the natural history of most issues, the larger capacity of daily newspapers relative to television news means that audiences often have a longer period of time to learn the newspaper agenda. Television news is more like the front section of the paper. Newspaper readers may have considerable exposure to an issue long before it ever reaches the top of the newspaper agenda or appears on the television agenda at all. (2004, p.49)

Other reasons may include citizen confidence and audience size. Recent Gallup polls on

Confidence in Institutions suggest that Americans have slightly more confidence in newspapers than television news. In 2011, 28% of those polled had “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of confidence in newspapers compared to 27% for television news (and comparatively, as benchmarks, 12% for congress and 35% for the presidency) (Gallup,

2011). Audience size for newspaper readership is large. About three-fourths of all adults in the United States read a newspaper, either in print or online (Walker, 2009).

A critically-oriented consideration for an analysis of local issues is the

“homogenization effect,” the naturalization or depoliticization of policy issues

(Habermas, 1991, p.188). This can occur when single daily newspaper has a monopoly on the printed construction of social reality (e.g., see Bagdikian, 1983). In some areas, like New York City, there is greater media pluralism, and no single publication dominates how social issues are constructed. For example, daily readership coverage in

New York City is distributed across the New York Daily News (29%), New York Post

(23%), and New York Times (27%) (Scarborough Research, 2008). However, in a media

survey conducted by Scarborough Research (2008), a single newspaper has readership

coverage of greater than 50% of the area’s total adult population in 34 (42%) of the survey’s 81 designated market areas across the United States. In Des Moines, Iowa, for example, The Des Moines Register coverage is 70% of the area’s adult population, which constitutes practically all daily newspaper readers for that area (Scarborough Research,

2008).

In such cases, studies on agenda setting and media framing will often limit analysis to the newspaper that dominates the issue culture (e.g., Smith, 1987; Mead,

1994; Kim, Scheufele & Shanahan, 2002). Sei-Hill Kim et al. (2002), for example, conducted a content analysis of media frames concerning the commercial development of the Southwest Park area of Ithaca, New York. The researchers limited their analysis to articles published in the Ithaca Journal and they defended their decision for using a single publication on the grounds that “it was the only daily local newspaper most of the city residents rely on for local news” (Kim et al., 2002, p.13). For the same reason in this dissertation The San Diego Union-Tribune was selected as a representation of an intersubjectively shared, media-constructed social reality. The Union-Tribune is the most widely read daily newspaper covering the San Diego metropolitan area. Its weekly print audience of 1.2 million readers accounts for 53.3% of its market area adult population of

2.25 million (Scarborough Research, 2008).

The reader audience for the Union-Tribune varies somewhat from the general population with regard to age, income, and other demographics, but the difference is no

greater than for newspaper readers on whole (see Newspaper Association of America,

2008), and, in some respects, considerably less than for a national newspaper like USA

Today. Typical of newspaper readers, in general, Union-Tribune readers, on average,

have higher household incomes and are older than the general San Diego County

population, though not by much. Compared to the national daily, USA Today, readers of

the Union-Tribune readers more closely represent the general population with regard to

median age, household income, percent female, and percent homeowners (see Table 2).

Table 2. Newspaper Readers Compared with San Diego County Residents

San Diego Union- San Diego County USA Today Tribune Population Demographic (Print News)1 (Print News)2 Ages 18 and Older3 Female Readers 35% 50% 50%

Median Reader Age 50 years 49 years 42 years

Median Reader Household $90,000 $70,000 $62,000 Income

Percent Homeowners 79% 73% 67%

1 USA Today (2010) reader profile retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/marketing/media_kit/pressroom/audience.html 2 The San Diego Union-Tribune (2009) reader profile retrieved from http://www.utads.com/market/print.html 3 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, Public Use Microdata Sample 3-Year Estimate, 2007- 2009. Retrieved from http://factfinder.census.gov

Empirical research sponsored by the San Diego County Water Authority found that respondents learned of water issues primarily from television and then from newspapers. A 2003 public opinion poll conducted by jointly by Rea & Parker Research and the Social Science Research Laboratory of San Diego State University found that

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“Residents of the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) service area indicated

that they obtain most of their news about local issues from television (49%) and from The

San Diego Union-Tribune (27%)… Radio is a distant third place with 8%.” (Rea &

Parker, 2003, p.6). In that survey, all other newspapers combined accounted for another

7%, which means that, in total, about a third of residents obtain most of their news about local issues primarily from newspapers, and, of those who do, 78% obtained their news from the Union-Tribune. Subsequent polls also found that roughly half the area’s

population relied on television as their primary source of information regarding local

issues, and a third relied on Newspapers, with the Union-Tribune accounting for 27% to

29%, the North County Times representing 4% to 5%, and all other newspapers combined

accounting for 1% to 2% (Rea & Parker Research, 2009, p.9). The North County Times

is the area’s second largest newspaper, but has only 13% readership coverage in the San

Diego Metropolitan Area, as compared to 53.3% for the Union-Tribune (Scarborough

Research, 2008). The issue focus of North County Times is more specific to northern San

Diego County and Southwest Riverside County. These areas are outside the city of San

Diego, which is the main policy arena of the case example, Indirect Potable Reuse in San

Diego.

Surprisingly, for local issues, the Internet was not heavily relied on as a main

source of information. This may have since changed, but in 2009 a poll conducted by

Rea & Parker, only 9% relied on the Internet for most information concerning local

issues (all websites combined), compared with 50% for television and 34% for

newspapers. This was a decrease from the 2008 poll, where 14% relied on the Internet,

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“with television seemingly picking up the slack” (Rea & Parker, 2009, p.7). These

specific poll results relative to the research cited by McCombs (2004) suggest that more

people watch television than read the newspaper for most of their information about local

issues. The local newspaper is the second-most referenced source, and, through repeated and often more in-depth coverage of an issue, is influential in shaping public opinion and setting the public’s agenda (McCombs, 2004, p.49).

Article Selection.

The San Diego Union-Tribune articles selected for review and analysis, published from 1984 through 2010, were sampled in May 2010 from the NewsBank database

(http://infoweb.newsbank.com), accessed through the Florida Atlantic University library’s EZproxy internet web proxy server. Articles published thereafter were subsequently sampled from the Union-Tribune’s online subscription service through to

December 2011, using key term queries.

The NewsBank database included all content printed in The San Diego Union and

The Evening Tribune newspapers, 1984 to 1992, and all content published in the San

Diego Union-Tribune, 1992 through to the date of article retrieval. That is, The San

Diego Union and The Evening Tribune were separate daily papers, respectively circulated as morning-only and evening-only editions, though both were owned by the Copley

Press. In 1992 they were combined under a single title, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

It may be worth noting that at the time the sample was drawn, the Florida Atlantic

University’s NewsBank subscription provided access to an extensive newspaper database from which the researcher could select a particular newspaper and perform query term

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searches within that title. The NewsBank archive included Union-Tribune articles

published from December 1983 through to the date of retrieval. NewsBank provided the

full text of the article and an APA or MLA formatted citation, but not a digital image of

the newspaper page as it appeared when printed, such as ProQuest Historical Newspapers

provides for its titles. However, Florida Atlantic University’s NewsBank database user

interface has since changed and at the time of this writing does not have this

functionality. The San Diego Union-Tribune provides online access to archived articles

via NewsBank. If the sampling process were to be repeated today, articles would be

retrieved directly from The San Diego Union-Tribune rather than through the Florida

Atlantic University library.

Article selection was conducted using query term searches followed by review of

the material. The query terms and phrases that best returned relevant source material

included: “toilet to tap,” “water reclamation,” “hyacinths,” “reverse osmosis,” “water purification,” “indirect potable reuse,” “reservoir augmentation,” “showers to flowers,”

“San Vicente,” “water reuse,” and “recycled water.” The generation of these and other query terms was an iterative process that involved in vivo coding (Strauss & Corbin,

1998) of the key concepts found in source material retrieved through synonym query terms. These codes were then applied as query terms for subsequent article retrieval. For example, the query phrase, “toilet-to-tap,” as a slogan used to represent the concept of indirect potable reuse of treated wastewater was initially known to me from a story I had heard on National Public Radio, “Toilet to Tap Planned for Orange County Water”

(Konecky, 2007). This query phrase resulted in 172 articles, features, editorials and

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letters printed in The San Diego Union-Tribune since 1997. Many of these also referred

to the same concept as “water purification,” the “Water Repurification Project,” “water

recycling,” “reclamation,” “water reuse,” “indirect potable reuse,” or “reservoir augmentation.” Each of these signification devices was subsequently used as a query phrase for article retrieval, and an interpretive judgment was made as to the relevance of the article to the case.

Microsoft Office 2010, Word and Excel, were used to create a master file of the selected articles. Initially 373 articles were retrieved using key word searches. The articles were divided into two categories: news stories, feature articles and specialty columns (N = 278) and editorials, letters to the editor, and opposite the editorial page contributions, all of which are printed in the “Opinion” section of the newspaper (N =

95). Of the 95 items sampled from the Opinion section, 77 (81%) were retained for the

purpose of text analytic frame mapping. With the news articles, feature stories, and

specialty columns, the analysis was intended to first identify the key actors from the narrative via text-mining with IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys. However, with

Opinion items, the key actor is the writer, and is already a known variable. In these cases, the criterion for sample selection was opinion content in support of or opposition to the indirect potable reuse project or its rival policy options. The 18 items not retained

provided contextual information regarding water conservation, reclamation with

nonpotable applications, and other water-related issues, but did not express an opinion or

argument specific to indirect potable reuse. These items were, however, retained as

reference material for the case narrative analysis and relevant examples are cited in the

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narrative. One item that, from its title, “Let Competition Solve Stadium Problem”

(Roberts, 2000), was seemingly off-topic was retained because the author, in an argument for the privatization of the San Diego football stadium, mentions the “toilet-to-tap program” as one of several instances of “bad decision-making at City Hall.” That is, the

author uses the ideographic label, “toilet-to-tap,” to represent the concept of indirect potable reuse, and frames it as an example of “bad decision-making.” I interpreted these data—an ideologically charged policy symbol paired with expressed sentiment—as being sufficient to warrant inclusion in the data set. The number of articles retained for analysis by type and year of publication is illustrated in Figure 1.

News Stories and Features (N = 278) 35 30

25 20 15 10 Frequency 5 0

Year of Publication

Opinion Section (N = 77) 35 30

25 20 15 10 Frequency 5 0

Year of Publication

Figure 1. Number of Articles Sampled by Year of Publication

The frequency of issue coverage and the placement of a story in the newspaper are indicative of how salient the issue was on the media agenda (McCombs, 2004). News

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stories and feature articles included 52 (19%) articles printed in the News section. This is

the front page and “A” section of the newspaper, which generally includes story topics at

the top of the media’s agenda. A total of 209 (75%) news stories were retrieved from the

Local and Zone sections, which include items of local interest to a particular community.

The remaining 17 (6%) were feature articles printed in the Sports (n = 3), Lifestyle (n =

4), Business (n = 4), and Real Estate (n = 6) sections.

The number of news stories and feature articles related to the reservoir augmentation project increased over time, and visual interpretation suggests two peak periods of coverage. Indirect potable reuse, as a news story on the media’s agenda, first peaked during 1998-1999 with the proposal for the Water Repurification Project, and then again from 2007-2008, with the San Diego City Council’s overturn of the Mayor’s veto on the Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project (now called the Advanced

Water Purification Facility). The other pulses in coverage are periods that correlate with certain related events that elevated the salience of the issue. There were publicity events concerning the consumption of water treated at the aquaculture treatment plants in 1985 and 1987, during which taste-tests were conducted at a posh restaurant, and public officials toasted with the treated water in cocktail glasses at a public ceremony. In 1991, there was a lawsuit filed by the U.S. EPA and State of California against the city of San

Diego for violating Clean Water Act permit and California wastewater discharge requirements. From 1998 to 1999, there was political opposition to the city of San

Diego’s Water Repurification Program when the engineering plans for the project revealed that treated wastewater effluent originating from affluent neighborhoods would

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be sent mainly to lower income, largely minority neighborhood. The project was

removed from the City Council’s agenda in 1999, but was revived in 2002 during the

settlement negotiations of another lawsuit brought by environmentalist groups over

sewage overflows at San Diego’s beaches. Issue salience pulses again in 2005 when the

City Council initiated a Water Reuse Study as part of these settlement negotiations, and

then peaks from 2007 to 2008, when the City Council committed to a new indirect

potable reuse demonstration project to be funded through water rate increases, which was

vetoed by the Mayor, but then subsequently overturned by the City Council.

Although indirect potable reuse and the related topics of water reclamation and

water conservation were on the media’s agenda during the 1980s, the first Opinion

section item in the sample concerning potable reuse was published in 1995 (Christianson,

1995). The distribution of Opinion section items (editorials, Op-Ed columns, and letters

to the editor) from 1995 through 2011 is concentrated such that 53 (69%) of the 77

opinion items sampled were published from 2006 through 2008. During this period, the

City Council had resolved to work towards implementing indirect potable reuse via

reservoir augmentation, which was opposed by the Mayor and the San Diego Union-

Tribune editorial board. There were 17 “toilet-to-tap” headlines for news stories printed

from December 1997 to May 1999, when the project was officially cancelled, but no such

pejorative slogans were found in the Opinion section of the Union Tribune during this

period. In fact, there were no letters to the editor on this topic, and only three opposite

the editorial page columns, all of which presented arguments in favor the indirect potable

reuse project (see Appendix A).

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CHAPTER 4: CASE NARRATIVE

This chapter provides the case narrative for the policy example, Reservoir

Augmentation in San Diego. The city of San Diego has a population of 1.3 million

people that use 210 million gallons of potable water per day. The city estimates that by

2030 its population will grow to about 2 million, and with conservation efforts the demand for potable water will increase to 260 million gallons per day. The city imports an average of 85 percent of its potable water from Northern California and the Colorado

River. The reliability of these external sources has proven somewhat precarious in times of drought. The need to offset demand for imported water by developing local water resources has been emphasized in the city’s 1997 Strategic Plan for Water Supply, the

1999 Grand Jury Report, the city’s Long-Range Water Resources Plan (2002-2030), and

the 2008 Grand Jury Report. The City Manager’s Status Report on the Long-Range

Water Resources Plan (2002-2030) identifies reclaimed water from the city’s two reclamation plants as key resources in mitigating demand for imported water, as did the

2006 Water Reuse Study, which outlined strategies to maximize the beneficial reuse of reclaimed water.

Local news media representations of San Diego’s policy ambitions for reservoir augmentation using treated wastewater serve as a test example for the analysis of frames.

In this policy story, the San Diego County Water Authority needs to develop its local water supply, and the San Diego Metro Wastewater Joint Powers Authority needs to

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upgrade its sewage treatment facility to be in compliance with the Clean Water Act. Both

needs intersect advances in wastewater reclamation technology, political gaming, and

public opinion. The topic involves the competing interests and values of various actors

and groups over a twenty-five year period, and has certain sensational values, such as

oddity, controversy, conflict, and danger, thus making it a good candidate for identifying

frames in media coverage (Altheide & Snow, 1979; Hertog & McLeod, 1995). The

length of the controversy, which has registered on the local media and policy agendas on

and off since the mid-1980s, is long enough to observe policy-oriented frame-shifts

associated with changes in the larger issue culture (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999).

This section is intended to provide a story context in which to better situate the findings of the frame analysis. The case narrative analysis is the policy dialectic that describes the frames of policy actors, the contestation of ideas within the policy arena, and external technological, political, cultural, and economic factors that contributed to the development of the city of San Diego’s current proposed plan to discharge highly treated wastewater effluent into the city’s second largest drinking water reservoir to augment its local water supply.

Preface to the Controversy

In 1964, the city of San Diego initiated a reverse osmosis pilot program at the city’s newly completed Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. This was a cooperative program with the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR). At the time, coastal San Diego County depended on imported water from the Colorado River for 85% of its water supply, and was discharging its wastewater into the ocean at a rate of 53

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million gallons per day (CDWR, 1968). The Department of Water Resources estimated

that 75% of the water lost to ocean discharge could potentially be reclaimed for beneficial

use. This would reduce San Diego’s dependence on imported water and enable the City to meet the water supply shortfall that CDWR projected would happen following completion of the Central Arizona Project (CDWR, 1968).

The situation was that the San Diego County Water Authority (SCWA) annually purchased far more water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

(MWD) than its legal entitlement. This wasn’t a problem as long as there was a surplus, which there was. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which held a half the voting power on MWD’s Board of Directors, had always been more interested in the

Boulder Canyon project as a source of cheap hydroelectricity than for its water (Zetland,

2011, p.12). This was because water imported from the Colorado River was more expensive than California water drawn down from the Owens River (Zetland, 2011). The city of San Diego, on the other hand, was facing a critical water shortage, and without imported water from MWD would not have otherwise met the water needs of its population (Engstrand, 2005, p.161).

The reason why San Diego was so dependent on imported water in the first place is the “blitz-boom” that occurred during World War II (Shragge, 1994). Within a very condensed time span, the number of military bases increased in size and number, and tens of thousands civilians moved to the area looking for work (Shragge, 1994). San Diego was quickly transformed from a “sleepy navy town” into a major metropolitan area that outpaced the local water supply (Nash, 1985). The situation was dire enough that, in

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1944, President Roosevelt issued a wartime directive for the Navy Department to build the San Diego Aqueduct, which linked the city of San Diego’s San Vicente Reservoir to the Metropolitan Water District’s Colorado River Aqueduct (Erie, 2006).

This course of action redefined San Diego’s water supply infrastructure. Waters originating from the lower basin of the Colorado River are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Boulder Canyon Project. California’s apportionment of these waters is transferred west across the Colorado River Aqueduct, which is managed by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD was established by the

California Legislature in 1928, expressly to build the Colorado River Aqueduct and serve as a regional water wholesaler cooperative). The city of San Diego also had rights to a portion of this water, but elected not join MWD because Los Angeles controlled half of its Board’s voting power (Zetland, 2009). The city of San Diego instead planned to eventually make its own connection to the Colorado River through the mountains

(Engstrand, 2005, p.142).

However, when the San Diego Canal was authorized by President Roosevelt in

1944, the California Legislature created the San Diego County Water Authority as a wholesaler cooperative to distribute imported water from MWD to the city of San Diego and the water and irrigation districts of its neighboring communities. SDCWA was annexed to the MWD in 1946, which was necessary under California’s the Metropolitan

Water District of Southern California Act (1928), which authorizes MWD to sell water only to its member agencies. SCWA immediately became the Metropolitan Water

District’s largest consumer and was purchasing half of its water in 1949 (Zetland, 2009).

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The reliability of imported Colorado River water from MWD was jeopardized

with the Arizona vs. California opinion filed in 1963 (373 US 546), and subsequent

decree filed in 1964 (376 US 340). Arizona successfully sued for increased water

priority, and the Metropolitan Water District’s allocation of waters from the Colorado

River was subsequently reduced by half. This was not an immediate threat since Arizona

had yet to build the infrastructure to make use of its increased water rights; the Central

Arizona Project, authorized under the Colorado River Basin Project Act of 1968, was

then anticipated to be operational in 1985 (Department of the Interior, 1981).

By 1968, lab-scale reverse osmosis configurations at the Point Loma Wastewater

Treatment Plant had evolved into two bench-scale units, which were soon replaced by a

small demonstration unit that produced water used for boiler feed and a cooling tower

(CDWR, 1975). This was not an isolated or unique project. Under grants funded through

the Water Resources Research Act of 1964, a program of research specific to wastewater

reclamation using reverse osmosis membranes had been established at local centers of

water research across the United States. There were at this time at least 23 other research institutes field-testing reverse osmosis with natural waters, all of which achieved

“drinking quality” water that met U.S. Public Health Standards (Allick, 1967). This same year the California Department of Public Health implemented statewide water reclamation criteria to protect the public from health risks.

During the 1970s there was a shift in environmental regulatory policy jurisdiction from the states to the federal government, with much of this authority transferred to the

U.S. EPA. Under the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972, the U.S.

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EPA was to regulate municipal wastewater systems through a national permit system and

establish uniform standards for wastewater treatment based on the “best available

technology.” (USEPA, 1972, p.13). This meant wastewater treatment facilities were to

provide secondary-level sewage treatment (i.e., bacteria are mixed with wastewater in a

holding tank, and the effluent is aerated until the organic matter is aerobically

metabolized). The problem for the city of San Diego was that the Point Loma

Wastewater Treatment Plant, which since 1963 services the entire San Diego

metropolitan area, did not provide this level of treatment. The Clean Water Act required

point sources to be in compliance with the new U.S. EPA standards by mid-1977, and the

cost of upgrading the Point Loma facility to provide secondary-level treatment was

initially estimated at about $1 billion (Flynn, 1986; LaRue, 1986).

It was at this time that the city of San Diego accelerated it reclamation research

and development program. In 1974, the reverse osmosis demonstration unit was moved

from Point Loma to a sod farm where it was field tested as an irrigation unit. Water

samples were sent to University of California at Berkeley to test for the presence of

viruses and other pathogens. Negative test results encouraged the city of San Diego to expand the program and seriously consider the idea of wastewater reclamation to augment the city’s potable water supply, both to reduce its dependence on imported water and as an alternative to constructing a new secondary-level wastewater treatment plant

(CDWR, 1975; USEPA, 1988).

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The Concept of Planned Wastewater Reuse

The concept of wastewater reclamation and recycling can mean different things in practice depending on the treatment processes employed and applications for reuse.

Reclaimed water has commercial and industrial uses, such as for boiler feed water and

cooling towers, or with dual piping it can be used for toilet flushing, laundry or have

aesthetic uses in public fountains. It can be used for the irrigation of freeway

landscaping, golf courses, public parks, lawns, or for animal or food crops. It can also be

used for as a saltwater intrusion barrier to protect existing groundwater supplies, or for

groundwater storage and replenishment. Finally, it can serve as part of the municipal raw

water supply through surface water reservoir augmentation.

Surveys have found that citizen attitudes towards wastewater recycling become

increasing less favorable when its use involves human contact and consumption (e.g.,

Bruvold, 1972, 1981, 1988; Jiménez, 2004). However, throughout the United States

there are many downstream localities that acquire their drinking water from rivers and

lakes containing treated wastewater discharges (Asano, Burton, Leverenz, Tsuchihashi, &

Tchobanoglous, 2006). Large cities such as New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati,

to name just a few examples, draw their potable water supply from rivers containing

wastewater discharges from municipalities upstream along the Mississippi, Delaware,

and Ohio Rivers. This unplanned reuse is generally accepted by the public, at least in

part, because of the lack of the public’s knowledge or interest, and the long-standing

stability of these water systems (Jansen, Strenstrom & de Koning, 2007).

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There are only a handful of full-scale planned indirect potable reuse projects in the United States. All but two are groundwater recharge projects, intended for underground storage or to serve as a saltwater intrusion barrier. One of the notable differences between reservoir augmentation and groundwater recharge is that public perception is generally more favorable towards the latter. Attitudinal surveys since 1972 have shown stronger public support for groundwater recharge when compared to reservoir augmentation, mainly because of the belief that percolation through soil and rock provides an additional filtration and biodegradation measure (Bruvold, 1988;

Jiménez, 2004). Two early examples of groundwater projects include the Montebello

Forebay Groundwater Recharge Project in Los Angeles, which began operation in 1962, and California’s Orange County Water District’s Factory 21 Seawater Barrier Project, which operated from 1976 to 2004, after which it was upgraded and reopened in 2008 as the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System. In the absence of any major incidents, these and other similar projects have been generally trusted by their communities and continue to operate without controversy (Po et al., 2003, p.3).

Until just recently, the only water recycling project in the United States involving the planned discharge of wastewater into surface water used as a potable water supply was the Upper Occoquan Service Authority project serving Fairfax, Virginia, which began operation in 1978 (McEwen, 1998). This project is the most commonly cited comparison to the indirect potable reuse reservoir augmentation project proposed for the city of San Diego, though a frequently observed difference is the amount of dilution.

When the city of San Diego’s reservoir augmentation project was first tested in the arena

115 of public opinion, treated wastewater from the Upper Occoquan Service Authority project constituted only 8% the Occoquan Reservoir’s total inflow volume, whereas in San

Diego the raw water mix would have been 50% treated wastewater (Balint, Dec. 7, 1997).

In late 2010, the Binney Water Purification Facility in Aurora, Colorado, began operation. This is the second facility in the United States to use treated wastewater for reservoir augmentation, though one of this project’s more appealing features is that the treatment also includes riverbank filtration, where the water is drawn through layers of sand and gravel (Illescas, 2010).

Organization of the Case History

The case narrative is divided into sections that represent stages, or epochs, defined by salient historical transitions significant to the indirect potable reuse/reservoir augmentation policy innovation’s trajectory. The first section includes the years, 1944 through 1978. The early period precedes indirect potable reuse as a policy innovation, but many of the structural components that enabled its development originated during this period. Rapid wartime population growth led to a water shortage for the city of San

Diego and, subsequently, a presidential order for the construction of the San Diego

Aqueduct. This was followed by the creation of the San Diego County Water Authority, which was annexed to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, creating a power struggle over water resources control between San Diego and the Los Angeles- controlled Metropolitan Water District, which has been framed as a “David vs. Goliath” contestation (Erie, 2006).

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There was also at this time a national “water agenda” that included reclamation and desalination research and development. By the late 1940s, desalination had already been accomplished on a small scale, but the various technologies that were being tested were not nearly cost-efficient enough for large scale operation (Kaempffert, 1949).

President Truman addressed the water issue as a growing concern and the need for government sponsored research. In his 1950 budget message, he stated:

Experience in recent years has been that it is not possible to meet the shortage of water, which is a threat in some areas, through our extensive water resources programs. I recommended, therefore, that the Congress enact legislation authorizing the initiation of research to find the means for transferring salt water into fresh water in large volumes at economical costs. (Delyannis, 2003, p.360)

In anticipation of federal funding for research, Universities and corporations began instituting seawater conversion research and development programs, while private individuals sought funding for their own designs. And during this time, the news media kept the issue on the public agenda with articles on various new desalination methods.

This legislative history includes the Saline Water Act of 1952, the Saline Water

Demonstration Act of 1958, Anderson-Aspinall Act of 1961, and the Water Resources

Research Act of 1964. Research funded under this national program resulted in advances in desalination technology, and most notably reverse osmosis technology, which became essential to the wastewater treatment process for indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation. The establishment of the California Department of Water Resources and its authorization to investigate wastewater reclamation for beneficial use is also a key element because it concentrated administrative powers that had previously been disaggregated and uncoordinated. The completion of the Point Loma Wastewater

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Treatment Plant in 1964, which serviced the entire San Diego metropolitan area, provided the basic infrastructure for wastewater reclamation. And, perhaps one of the most important factors was the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1964 California v. Arizona decision, which reduced California’s share of waters from the lower basin of the Colorado River.

During this period, the city of San Diego, in collaboration with the California

Department of Water Resources, established a research and development program that applied reverse osmosis technology as part of the treatment process and tested the potential use of constructed wetlands for wastewater reclamation. These were independent projects originating at different times, and administrated under different authorities, but they were later combined under a grant from the U.S. EPA. Key federal legislation during this period includes the Federal Water Pollution Control Act

Amendments, beginning 1972. The Clean Water Act amendments established higher level wastewater treatment standards for ocean discharge than the city of San Diego’s

Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant provided. A notable event during this period was a two-year drought, from November 1975 through November 1977, the two driest years in California’s recorded history.

The second epoch includes the years, 1979 through 1991. This represents the second stage of the evolution of indirect potable reuse as a policy innovation. With funding through a U.S. EPA “clean water” grant, the city of San Diego combined its reverse osmosis and constructed wetlands projects into a single Total Resource Recovery

Program. This epoch includes completion city’s increasingly scaled demonstration projects: the Aqua I pilot, which was used to irrigate a sod farm; the Aqua II

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demonstration plant, which provided water to the California Department of

Transportation for landscape irrigation; and the Aqua III Water Reclamation Facility and

Research Center, which could produce a million gallons per day (MGD) of treated

wastewater suitable for irrigation and agriculture. This period also includes the partial

results from the health effects studies conducted on water produced by the Aqua II

facility, and a lawsuit against the city of San Diego filed by the U.S. EPA for failure to

comply with wastewater standards established through the Clean Water Act. The period

is characterized by the absence of public involvement in potable reuse planning, and a

largely monological discourse of unchallenged support by public officials and the media

towards the naturalization of the reservoir augmentation concept.

The third section covers 1992 through 1999. During this period the North City

Reclamation Plant was constructed, with plans towards implementing the indirect potable

reuse project in 2001 using a full-scale advanced wastewater treatment facility, the Water

Repurification Project. This project included a public outreach component. The indirect

potable reuse concept was debated in the media and used by politicians as part of their

platform during state assembly and city council elections. The epoch concludes with the

project’s cancellation in 1999 amid controversy over the engineering plans, which would

have had treated wastewater originating from affluent neighborhoods piped to poorer,

largely minority communities.

The fourth epoch includes the years, 2000 through 2011. During this period,

renewed local interest in the reservoir augmentation concept by environmentalist groups,

San Diego BayKeeper and the Surfrider Foundation, becomes a bargaining chip during

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settlement negotiations with the city of San Diego over its sewage spills and overflows

off of Point Loma. Pivotal events include the City Council’s approval of a new study on

wastewater reclamation, including the reservoir augmentation concept, which ran from

2004 to 2006. In 2007, the City Council voted for a pilot project that would augment the

reservoir with treated wastewater. The Mayor vetoed the council’s decision, only to have

his veto overturned by the City Council. This was followed by policy debate in the

media, with 111 articles and letters on this topic published in the Union-Tribune in 2007

and 2008, of which 51 (46%) were letters, editorials, guest editorials, and op-ed pieces.

Construction of the demonstration project’s Advanced Water Purification Facility was

completed in June 2011. This is where the case narrative concludes. Currently, the

question of a reservoir augmentation reclamation project remains unresolved. The Water

Purification Demonstration Project is scheduled to complete its performance cycle in

early 2013. The City Council will then vote on whether to build a full-scale facility and

move the project to an implementation stage.

Epoch 1: 1944 to 1978

Water Supply Infrastructure and Agencies.

Water supply for the city of San Diego is managed by the San Diego Water

Department, which was first created in 1901 (Black, 1913), and is now one of two branches, along with Wastewater, that constitutes the city’s Public Utilities Department

(City of San Diego, 2011). During its first two decades, the Water Department’s expansion was achieved mainly through the lease and purchase of land, pipeline, water rights, and equipment held by private water suppliers (Black, 1913; McGrew, 1922). To

120 keep up with demand from a growing population, several water projects were initiated to store and transfer water to from eastern portion of San Diego County, where rainfall can be double or triple that of the coastline (McGrew, 1922). Notable projects include the

Barrett Dam and Reservoir, completed in 1922, and the El Capitan Dam and Reservoir, completed in 1935. These sufficiently provided a local water supply for the city of San

Diego until the rapid population growth that occurred during World War II (Shragge,

1994).

During World War II, the San Diego area experienced a “blitz-boom” in population growth (Shragge, 1994). The influx of more than $70 billion in federal funds into California transformed coastal San Diego from a “sleepy navy town” into a major metropolitan area (Nash, 1985, pp.25, 59). During this period, “tens of thousands of people swarmed into town looking for work, while military bases grew in number and size” (Shragge, 1994, p.333). The unprecedented increase in population greatly strained the city of San Diego’s resources, and additional water was critically needed (Nash,

1985). In 1944, in the interest of national defense, President Roosevelt issued a wartime executive order directing the Navy Department to construct the San Diego Aqueduct.

The channel linked the city of San Diego’s San Vicente Reservoir to the Colorado River

Aqueduct, which was managed by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

(Erie, 2006, p.101).

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan) was established as the regional water wholesaler by the California Legislature in 1928.

Metropolitan was created specifically to exercise California’s water rights to the

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Colorado River, as established under the Colorado River Compact, and ratified under the

Boulder Canyon Project Act (PL 70-642). The city of San Diego was granted a portion of this water by the California Division of Water Resources (now the Department of

Water Resources), but had initially elected not to join the Metropolitan Water District, largely because, from its inception, Metropolitan was dominated by the City of Los

Angeles, which controlled fifty percent of its Board’s votes (Zetland, 2009). At the time of the Metropolitan Water District Act, the city of San Diego had instead undertaken the

El Capitan water project for its near-future water needs, and it planned to eventually make its own connection to the Colorado River through the mountains (Engstrand, 2005, p.142).

However, San Diego’s independence of the Metropolitan Water District was short-lived. Following Roosevelt’s order for a San Diego Aqueduct, the California legislature established the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA), which was modeled after the Metropolitan Water District, but at the county-level. That is, the county water authority was to act as a regional water wholesaler cooperative to manage the distribution of imported water for the city of San Diego and the water and irrigation districts of neighboring communities. In 1946, SDCWA was annexed to the Metropolitan

Water District as a member agency, which was necessary under California’s Metropolitan

Water District of Southern California Act of 1928, which permits Metropolitan to sell water only to its member agencies (Erie, 2006, p.101).

This arrangement was beneficial for both Metropolitan and the county water

district (Erie, 2006, p.102). From the very beginning, the Los Angeles Department of

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Water and Power had been more interested in the Boulder Canyon project as a source of

cheap hydroelectricity than for its water (Zetland, 2011, p.12). Imported water from the

Colorado River Aqueduct was more expensive than the water from Owens River that was

transferred through the Los Angeles Aqueduct. This left the Metropolitan Water District

with a surplus allocation of water originating from the Colorado River. The city of San

Diego, on the other hand, was facing a critical water shortage, and without Metropolitan’s water it would not have otherwise met the water needs of its population in 1948

(Engstrand, 2005, p.161).

The San Diego County Water Authority immediately became the Metropolitan

Water District’s largest consumer and was purchasing half of its water in 1949 (Zetland,

2009). During the drought of 1957, when the Water Authority’s eleven reservoirs were at only 15% their storage capacity, Metropolitan imported water for San Diego at the maximum rated capacity of its two conduits; that year construction of a third channel was authorized (CDWR, 1968).

However, because the voting power of the Metropolitan Water District member agencies was based on assets and not consumption, San Diego would continue to have less influence in water policy decisions and less preferential water rights than Los

Angeles (Erie, 2006, p.98). The relationship between the San Diego County Water

Authority and the Metropolitan Water District has been portrayed as a “David-and-

Goliath” battle, with San Diego as “David,” continuously working towards water independence from the Metropolitan Water District “Goliath” controlled by Los Angeles

(Erie, 2006, p.97). And, because the voting power of Metropolitan Water District

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member agencies was based on taxable assets and not consumption, San Diego would

always have less influence in water policy decisions and less preferential water rights

than Los Angeles (Erie, 2006, p.98). The conceptualization of the Metropolitan Water

District as a Goliath extends to the present: The San Diego Water Authority still

maintains that “members of Metropolitan have secretly conspired to thwart San Diego’s

initiatives to secure independent water supplies and lower the costs of delivering

Metropolitan water” (Gardner, 2012). This frame might seem overly dramatized, but

Union-Tribune recently printed an editorial suggests evidence of “water bullying” by the

Metropolitan Water Authority:

This time, officials at the San Diego County Water Authority had the goods in writing – 500 pages of emails and other documents obtained by the San Diego agency under the state’s Public Records Act. The documents showed that a voting majority of MWD members had formed what the MWD members themselves called the “Secret Society” and the “Anti-San Diego Coalition.” CWA called it a secret “shadow government” for the purpose of setting water rates, developing policies and otherwise discriminating against the San Diego agency and its ratepayers. (“The Water Bully of Southern California,” 2012)

This “David-and-Goliath,” or, better, “water bully” frame also holds for the relationship between the city of San Diego and the other member agencies within the San

Diego County Water Authority. Today, the San Diego County Water Authority has substantial powers granted in the California Water Code. The county water authority sets water rates, can authorize the construction of facilities, enter into contracts, incur debts and issue bonds, and levy taxes to carry out its mission. The county water authority is also empowered to carry out wastewater reclamation and reuse projects, with the authority to:

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Acquire, store, treat, reclaim, repurify, reuse, distribute, and sell sewage water, wastewater, and seawater for beneficial uses and purposes. “Repurify” means, for the purpose of this paragraph, to treat reclaimed water sufficiently so that the water may be discharged into a reservoir that supplies water to the treatment facility for a domestic water system. (California Water Code § 45-5.12)

In the county water authority’s decision-making arena, the city of San Diego is the

“Goliath” or “water bully” consistently controlling more than 40% of the voting power on its Board of Directors, which is weighted in direct proportion to each member agency’s financial contributions during the previous year (California Water Code,

Section 45-6). Beginning December 1997, the city of San Diego adopted an ordinance requiring the city’s representatives to the San Diego County Water Authority to cast the city’s vote as a single unit (O-18445). This solidarity allows the city of San Diego to

“ride roughshod over the smaller districts” (Edwards, 2005, p.99), and effectively extends the authority of City to other communities outside the city’s municipal jurisdiction with regard to water-related projects and policies, including the distribution of reclaimed wastewater water for potable reuse, and water rate increases.

The San Diego Metropolitan Sewage System.

It was at this time, in 1949, that the California Legislature, addressing the need to further develop its water resources, authorized the California Department of Water

Resources to study the feasibility of including wastewater reclamation as part of the

California Water Plan (per Section 230 of the California Water Code). The city of San

Diego, like other coastal communities, discharges its wastewater in the ocean, and the water is lost to any potential beneficial use, such as for agriculture or industry. The city of San Diego first began treating its wastewater prior to discharge in 1943, at which time

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the outfall was at the San Diego Bay. Neighboring communities, which also discharged

sewage into the bay, also developed their own wastewater treatment facilities. These first

treatment plants were quickly overloaded from the area’s quickly growing population,

and the pollution was so bad that in 1955 the San Diego Bay was quarantined by the

California State Department of Public Health (CDWR, 1968, p.21). High bacteria levels posed risks to human health, and the pollution was also an environmental issue. By the late 1950s, the giant kelp forests off of Point Loma, which sustained a variety of marine species, including suspension feeders, detritivores and sea urchins, were completely decimated (Tegner et al., 1995).

In 1958, the city of San Diego and its neighboring cities and towns agreed that the most economical solution to the sewage problem was to develop a unified sewage system that would serve the entire San Diego metropolitan area (CDWR, 1968, p.21). The plans for the San Diego Metropolitan Sewage System did not initially include any water reclamation features. This omission became an issue of contention among a small group of reclamation proponents, one of which, Dr. Richard Worthington, a Point Loma psychologist, filed an injunction lawsuit to block the revenue bonds for the sewage system. However, after receiving assurances from the City Council that a wastewater reclamation feature would be incorporated into the new sewage system, Worthington withdrew the suit (“San Diego Sewer Bond Injunction Withdrawn,” 1961). Although the concession was a victory for reclamation proponents, Worthington’s supporters were dissatisfied that he “did not demand the resignation of the City Manager, George Bean, and other city officials as a condition of withdrawing the lawsuit” (p.B8).

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The San Diego Metropolitan Sewage System was completed in 1963. At the

time, the metropolitan area had fourteen major sewage treatment facilities, and all except

the Lakeside and Santee treatment plants were shut down (CDWR, 1968). The service

areas for the closed treatment plants, a combined 400 square miles, were consolidated

into the unified system, which in total served just over 1.2 million residents. Influent

from the entire service area received primary treatment at the newly constructed

treatment plant at Point Loma, a peninsula off the coast of the city of San Diego that is

occupied by several federal and local government facilities. The treatment includes

screening, aerated grit removal, and sedimentation. Grease and oil are skimmed, and

methane gas is burned off. Digested sludge is pumped to the Mission Bay Park for

landfill, and the plant effluent was discharged two miles off the coast from an outfall 220

feet below sea level, which was far enough from shore that by the 1970s the kelp forest

had recovered and stabilized (Tegner et al., 1995). To keep up with future population

growth, the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant was designed so that its capacity

could be upgraded and expanded over time. The Point Loma facility remains the main

treatment plant for the San Diego metropolitan area. Notably, there was no reclamation

feature included in the plant’s original design (CDWR, 1968).

Arizona vs. California Decision.

The San Diego area population continued to grow, as did its dependence on

Colorado River water, to where, by 1960, the Metropolitan Water District supplied the

San Diego area with 85 percent of its total water supply (CDWR, 1968, p.2). The San

Diego County Water Authority was continuously purchasing more water than its original

127 allocation, but this was not a problem so long as there was a surplus. However, the reliability of the Colorado River as a water source was jeopardized with the Arizona vs.

California opinion filed in 1963 (373 US 546), and subsequent decree filed in 1964 (376

US 340). Arizona successfully sued for increased water priority, and California’s allocation to Metropolitan was subsequently reduced by half. This was not an immediate threat since Arizona had yet to build the infrastructure to make use of its increased water rights; the Central Arizona Project, authorized under the Colorado River Basin Project

Act of 1968, was then anticipated to be operational in 1985 (Department of the Interior,

1981). Also, the Metropolitan Water District was already anticipating future water to be supplied through California’s State Water Project, initiated in 1960. However, with future water supplies uncertain, following the completion of the Point Loma Wastewater

Treatment Plant, the city of San Diego water collaborated with California Department of

Water Resources on a reclamation program to offset its water requirement from the

Metropolitan Water District.

Reverse Osmosis Pilot Project.

In the last 1950s, breakthrough research in reverse osmosis at UCLA and at the

University of Florida, Gainesville, had been achieved using cellulose acetate membranes

(Loeb, 1981). By the early 1960s, the efficiency of reverse osmosis had improved to where it was one of the most viable new desalination technologies. Compared with distillation, reverse osmosis had the advantages of lower energy requirements, smaller, more portable, unit size, and less corrosion and scale formation due to low temperature operation (Bengelsdorf, 1967). Although reverse osmosis was originally developed for

128 seawater or brackish water desalination, it was found to have much greater efficiency with wastewaters, due to the comparatively lower concentrations of dissolved solids

(USEPA, 1988). Under grants funded through the Water Resources Research Act of

1964 (PL 88-379), a program of research specific to wastewater filtration using reverse osmosis membranes was established at local centers of water research across the United

States. By 1967, there were at least 23 research institutes field-testing reverse osmosis with natural waters, all of which achieved “drinking quality” water that met U.S. Public

Health Standards (Allick, 1967).

As part of this line of research, in 1967, the city of San Diego in collaboration

with the California Department of Water Resources initiated a reverse osmosis pilot program at the newly completed Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. This was the same year the California Department of Public Health implemented statewide water reclamation criteria to protect the public from health risks. Tests conducted at the

University of California at Berkeley found that the reverse osmosis units had the potential to remove viruses, and this finding encouraged the California Department of Water

Resources and the city of San Diego to expand the program with the intent of reclaiming wastewater for beneficial reuse, including indirect potable reuse through reservoir augmentation (CDWR, 1975; USEPA, 1988). Over the following six years, the reverse osmosis project was incrementally expanded from its various lab-scale configurations to

two bench-scale units, in 1968, to an automated a demonstration unit, in 1970, with a capacity to produce 16,000 gallons per day (gpd) of high quality water. The resulting effluent was used for boiler feed and for a cooling tower system. In 1974, the unit was

129 moved offsite and used to irrigate a sod farm, with samples tested for the presence of viruses at the University of California at Berkeley (CDWR, 1975, p.10).

Environmental Policies of the 1970s.

The 1970s were a period of increased public attention to environmental pollution control, marked by a shift in power where jurisdiction over environmental quality standards was transferred from the states to the federal government. This was advanced in response to a series of water pollution related events that received national media attention. In 1969, there were two major oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara,

California, and, in Cleveland, Ohio, oil and industrial waste on the surface of Cuyahoga

River caught fire from a train spark (Linstrom & Kane, 2011). Following these events, the federal government passed legislation that created “a policy shift that earned the

1970s the nickname of the Environmental Decade” (Ashenmiller, 2011, p.679). But this was also a period of “New Federalism” in which “states were viewed as the ‘agents’ of federal ‘principals’ in a principal-agent framework” (Sapat, 1997, p.4). Federal policies most relevant to San Diego’s reclamation program include the Water Pollution Control

Act Amendments of 1972 and 1977 (the Clean Water Act), which authorized the U.S.

EPA to establish effluent quality standards and a national permitting system—the

National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program—for point source discharges; and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, which authorized the U.S.

EPA to establish federal drinking water quality standards.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 established a requirement for federal agencies to conduct environmental assessments and environmental impact

130 statements for public works projects. Although this was not part of the shift toward environmental federalism during the 1970s, this legislation is significant in that it provided a framework for the environmental impact report requirements under

California’s Environmental Quality Act of 1970. This would become influential on the trajectory of the development of California’s various water projects, including the Water

Purification Project proposed for San Diego (e.g., Balint, March 5, 1998).

During the early 1970s the incentive for the city of San Diego to accelerate its reverse osmosis research program was not uncertainty of its water supply due to potential drought or the impending reduction in its allocation of imported waters from the

Colorado River, but rather the Clean Water Act requirements for wastewater treatment.

Under the Clean Water Act of 1972, the U.S. EPA was to establish uniform standards for wastewater effluent based on the “best available technology” (USEPA, 1972, p.13). This meant wastewater treatment facilities were to provide secondary, biological, sewage treatment, during which bacteria are mixed with wastewater in a holding tank, and the effluent is aerated until the organic matter is aerobically metabolized and the biological oxygen demand (BOD) of the effluent is low enough that it can be discharged (USEPA,

1972).

The problem for the city of San Diego was that the design of the Point Loma

Wastewater Treatment Plant limited sewage treatment to primary treatment. The Clean

Water Act of 1972 required point sources to be in compliance with the new U.S. EPA standards by July 1977, and the cost of upgrading the Point Loma facility to provide secondary-level treatment was then estimated at about $1 billion (Flynn, 1986; LaRue,

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1986). However, the Clean Water Act amendments of 1977 extended the deadline for

compliance, and allowed municipalities discharging sewage into marine or estuarine

waters to apply for a “Section 301(h)” waiver from the Clean Water Act’s secondary- level treatment requirement. The purpose of the provision was allow coastal communities to obtain National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits and avoid the high cost of treatment for the sake of a uniform policy, since the ocean more effectively dilute the discharged effluent than inland rivers and lakes (Copeland, 1995).

Notably, 1977 was the year of a serious drought, and the Metropolitan Water District had asked its member agencies to reduce consumption by ten percent. San Diego would file for the ocean discharge waiver, but also sought to develop its own water resources to increase its independence from the Metropolitan Water District (Zetland, 2009).

Epoch 2: 1979 to 1991

Aquatic Treatment Project.

The city of San Diego applied for a Section 301(h) ocean discharge variance in

August 1979, based on the claim that the level of dilution at the outfall of the Point Loma

Wastewater Treatment Plant sufficiently achieved the same standard results as would secondary-level treatment. At this time, the U.S. EPA was awarding grants for wastewater reclamation research, funded under the Clean Water Act. Also, 1979 was a mayoral election year for the city of San Diego, and incumbent Pete Wilson had included

“getting the federal government to back a major wastewater reclamation project in his city” as part of his campaign platform (Skelton, 1979, p.3). The city of San Diego received a $500,000 Clean Water Act grant to initiate the San Diego Aquatic Treatment

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Project, a water reclamation study, conducted jointly with the San Diego County Water

Authority, and supported by the California Department of Water Resources.

The Aquatic Treatment Project was an experimental reclamation method that, as

an alternative to activated sludge treatment, relied on constructed wetlands with water

hyacinths to remove dissolved solids from the wastewater (USEPA, 1988). The wetlands

would contain various species of plants and fish that generally thrive in freshwater

marshes, but the main principle behind this treatment method was that the water

hyacinths, as they grew, would absorb nutrients, and metabolize metals and other toxins,

from the sewage (USEPA, 1988).

The design for this low-tech approach is credited to George Allen, a professor of

fisheries at Humboldt State University (Louv, 1985). Allen had first presented his

wastewater reclamation idea to the Arcata City Council in 1963, but, at the time, “a lot of

people thought he was just a crazy professor” (Louv, 1985). However, with the Federal

Water Pollution Control Act amendments, local governments were required to start

enhancing quality of their wastewater effluent, and “that’s when everybody turned to

Allen” (Louv, 1985). Arcata, a much smaller city than San Diego, was the first in

California to use constructed wetlands for wastewater reclamation, and the project saved the city millions of dollars over the cost of conventional secondary treatment.

Interestingly, Allen added a new twist to his original design: he was raising salmon and steelhead trout in the sewage effluent ponds, and then releasing them into a natural ecosystem. As a symbol of the project’s efficacy, “Arcata has set up a kind of shrine to

George Allen at City Hall: a clear plastic toilet with trout swimming in it” (Louv, 1985).

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The city of San Diego adopted Allen’s design for its Aquatic Treatment Pilot

Project, which was at first conceived as a demonstration program to establish the viability of an aquatic system that could produce water equivalent to secondary treatment quality

(USEPA, 1988). The higher quality water would then be reclaimed for a variety of beneficial uses, and would simultaneously reduce ocean pollution and reduce San

Diego’s dependence on imported water from the Metropolitan Water District, which, at the time, was 90% of the city of San Diego’s water supply (CDWR, 1975).

The Aqua I demonstration facility was fully operational in 1981, producing

30,000 gallons of water per day for surface irrigation. At this time, the U.S. EPA issued tentative approval for the San Diego’s application for a 301(h) ocean discharge variance.

This reprieve allowed the City to stall its plans to construct a secondary-level treatment facility, and focus on reclamation strategies as an alternative. In November 1983, the

City revised its 301(h) waiver application to the U.S. EPA to reflect these changes.

The aquaculture project was expanded, beginning in 1983, with an initial budget of approximately $20 million. This included successive construction of a second and third demonstration plant with increasingly greater capacity: the Aqua II Water

Reclamation Facility, completed in 1984, which had a 300,000 gallon per day capacity; and the Aqua III Water Reclamation Facility and Aqua 2000 Research Center, which opened in 1993, which had a daily treatment capacity of 1 million gallons (USEPA, 1988;

Berliner, 1993).

Beginning with the Aqua II plant, the project’s goal was to research the potential for the aquaculture treatment to produce water of potable quality (Council of the City of

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San Diego, 1986). For these demonstration projects, aquaculture treatment was

combined with the city’s pilot reverse osmosis research project. Wastewater effluent

treated using hyacinth ponds would flow to an advanced treatment stage (USEPA, 1988).

Funding for the Total Resource Recovery Project was 75% from a federal Clean Water

grant, 12.5% from the California Department of Water Resources, and 6.25% each from

the city of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority (Council of the City of

San Diego, 1986).

Peripheral Canal Act and its Repeal.

One of the external factors to impact San Diego’s water supply was the repeal of

the Peripheral Canal in 1982. When the bond issue for the State Water Project was

approved by California voters in 1960, the original plans included water transfer facilities

in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta. However, following sustained opposition from Delta-Bay stakeholders, including agricultural interests, fisheries, boaters, and fish

and wildlife agencies, the Delta’s natural waterways were used as a low-impact alternative (CDWR, 1967). The use of natural water channels resulted in unanticipated environmental problems. The pumping stations at the Delta’s southern base were powerful enough that, when the water levels were low, they would reverse the natural flow of the water. This confused and reduced the populations of various estuarial species, such as salmon and smelt, which swim against the current to spawn. The pumps also degraded the water quality as removal of freshwater increased saltwater intrusion from the San Francisco Bay.

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As a means of transferring water for the State Water Project and protecting the

Delta, the state-federal Interagency Delta Committee proposed the Peripheral Canal.

Instead of transferring water through the Delta, a 42-mile conduit would transport waters

from the Sacramento River around the Delta along its eastern periphery. The plan for the

canal was first adopted by the California Department of Water Resources in 1966, and

was generally supported by the various Delta-Bay stakeholder groups. The California

Department of Water Resources had assured the Delta would be protected through

legislation and contracts prior to the canal’s construction, and that the water requirements of the Delta area would have priority over water exports (CDWR, 1978).

However, when Ronald Reagan succeeded Pat Brown as California Governor in

1967, plans for the Peripheral Canal stalled. Reagan had appointed William Gianelli as the Director of the California Department of Water Resources. At this time, cost

estimates for the project were escalating due to high inflation rates, and Gianelli sought

federal assistance. In 1969, in an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the

plans for the Peripheral Canal were changed to where it would become a joint-use facility

for the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, with costs split equally between

the projects (CDWR, 1978).

When the project’s environment impact report was released in 1974, Delta-Bay interests found that the guarantees for the Delta’s protection were not being honored.

Apparently, the change from a Democratic to a Republican gubernatorial administration led to a shift in values concerning the Delta’s environmental protections. Gianelli had greatly underestimated environmental movement, and saw their concerns as a case of

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“chicken little” (Robie, 1989, p. iv). In 1975, when Jerry Brown succeeded Ronald

Reagan, he appointed Ronald Robie as the Department’s new director. Robie’s first task was to “bring the environmental movement into harmony with the objectives of the water resources development advocates” (Robie, 1989, p. v). He immediately ordered a reappraisal of the project, and conducted public hearings and negotiations with various stakeholder groups.

In 1978, the California Department of Water Resources released a revised Delta water facilities proposal. The amended plan included the environmental protections lacking in the previous version. It also included additional water conservation measures, such as groundwater storage, water recycling and wastewater reclamation to extend the current supply (CDWR, 1978, p. iii). Governor Brown organized a coalition of water, environmental, labor, farming, and other interest groups that supported the project, and, in July 1980, after several proposed Bills and amendments, the Peripheral Canal was signed into law.

However, a few weeks prior, the California legislature placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot for a November vote: Proposition 8. It was designed to safeguard the Delta and north-coast rivers if the Peripheral Canal Bill was passed. When

Proposition 8 was approved by the California electorate many of the pro-development interests, unwilling to “lock up the north coast rivers as the price for securing the

Peripheral Canal,” including the California Farm Bureau Federation, which previously supported the canal, joined its opposition (Hundley, 2001, p.328). Canal opponents

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acquired double the number of signatures required for a referendum, and Proposition 9,

Repeal of the Peripheral Canal, was on the ballot for a vote in June 1982.

Water users from the San Joaquin Valley and southern California strongly supported the canal. The Metropolitan Water District and San Diego County Water

Authority, at this time, were facing the possibility of a future water shortage, having lost priority rights to half of their imported water following the Arizona v. California decision. However, Sacramento Valley interests, and Northern Californians, in general, had always opposed the project, and found any contractual or legislated protections insufficient, since they could later be reversed after the engineering infrastructure was in place. They saw the canal as a “water grab” for southern California, and didn’t want “to give the Metropolitan Water District the plumbing to suck them dry in a drought year”

(Hundley, 2001, p.320).

In June 1982 California voters repealed the Peripheral Canal by a margin of nearly three to two, and, in the process, Proposition 8 protections, which were contingent on the Peripheral Canal. In response, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors assembled a Technical Advisory Committee to study how San Diego could become less dependent on imported water for its supply (Clark, 1984). In addition to various conservation strategies, and wastewater reclamation and recycling, the Technical

Advisory Committee proposed market solutions, such as tiered water rates to reduce demand, and water purchases, either from other water districts or private suppliers. This was a new way of thinking, as water rights and entitlements had previously been based on politically negotiated allocation systems, established mainly through federal programs

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(Gottlieb & Wiley, 1987, p.29). These ideas were all eventually implemented as policy,

but not until fifteen to twenty years later. Notable examples include a three-tier water rate structure for single-family residences that was first adopted by the city of San Diego

in 1997 (resolution R-289102); a water transfer agreement with the Imperial Irrigation

District (IID) in 1998 (resolution R-289767); water purchases from the privately-owned

Western Water Company in 2002 (resolution R-295948).

Although the San Diego County Water Authority had rejected the idea San Diego could somehow disentangle itself from the Metropolitan Water District, there was a sense of optimism about the aquaculture pilot. In a newspaper article, “County Declares its

Water Independence” (Clark, 1984), which followed the release of the Technical

Advisory Committee’s report, the San Diego County Water Authority General Manager,

Larry Michaels, is quoted regarding its potential:

With reclamation through the use of water hyacinths, he said, “it’s starting to look like reclaimed water can amount to 10 percent of the county’s supply,” Michaels said recently. “It’s huge.”

The same article also cites Emily Durbin of the Sierra Club, who commented that the major obstacle to reclamation projects was mainly that the cost of the reclaimed water relative to imported water was being obscured by subsidies and tax-breaks provided to agricultural water users. Durbin’s sentiment summarizes the general urban water user’s attitude toward the lower water rates and tax exemptions available to agricultural interests. Notably, Durbin, as both a Sierra Club member and private citizen, is active on a number of environmental issues. In 1987, she writes as a guest columnist for the San

Diego Tribune, opposing the adverse environmental impact of the Pamo Valley Dam and

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Reservoir project. In 1991, for similar reasons, she is an intervenor, successfully

blocking the consent decree between the federal and state government and the city of San

Diego in a civil enforcement lawsuit against the City for continuous violations of the

Clean Water Act and California’s water code.

Wastewater Reclamation for Agricultural Use.

The agricultural water districts had become a scapegoat of sorts, and “many consumer and environmental advocated abolishing the lower rates offered agriculture water users, particularly when some farm crops are grown as tax shelters, as is the case with some avocado groves” (Clark, 1984). Similar to the rift between the San Diego

County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District, in which the Metropolitan

Water District interests were principally controlled by Los Angeles, there was also contention within the city-dominated County Water Authority between urban and agricultural users. At the time, the County’s Agricultural Commission had been working with sanitation officials from the more rural parts of San Diego County towards large- scale irrigation projects using reclaimed water, so as to become more independent of San

Diego County Water Authority.

From 1981 to 1985, three reclamation plants were constructed: Oceanside’s San

Luis Rey Wastewater Treatment Plant, which fills Whalen Lake; the Shadowridge Water

Reclamation Plant in southern Vista southern Vista; and the Meadowlark Water

Reclamation Plant in southern San Marcos (Okerblom, 1985). Each faced different obstacles that prevented the reclaimed water from being utilized, and tens of millions of

140 gallons of water reclaimed at these facilities were being pumped into the ocean

(Okerblom, 1985).

At Oceanside, the vision was for Whalen Lake to supply water for produce, but the Health Department was concerned with the potential risk from disease organisms not indicated by the coliform level, and required testing over an extensive period prior to implementation (Okerblom, 1985). The Shadowridge plant was managed by a land developer, and intended to produce irrigation water for landscaping. However, to prevent nearby groundwater supplies from becoming saltier, the Regional Water Quality Control

Board set strict limits for total dissolved solids in the effluent, and water treated to that level would cost twice as much as imported water (Okerblom, 1985).

In both of these cases, the state Health Department and the Regional Water

Quality Control Board were blamed by reclamation proponents, the Agricultural

Commission, the North County Association of Water Reclamation Agencies, and local sanitation districts for overcautious and unnecessary regulations (Okerblom, 1985). In contrast, the Meadowlark plant provides more highly filtered effluent and was not affected by regulations for total dissolved solids because its drainage basis was not near any wells, and contracts for spray irrigation at 75% the cost of imported water were negotiated beginning 1985 (Okerblom, 1985). The following year, the Regional Water

Quality Control Board relaxed its standards to allow the Water Authority to inject reclaimed sewage into five major groundwater basins in the San Pasqual Valley, which could subsequently be used for agricultural irrigation (LaRue, Dec. 29, 1986).

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Health Effects Study Initiated.

Of the aquaculture project’s total $20 million budget, $4.2 million was allocated

for Potable Effluent Resource Application Studies (adopted by the City Council in July

1985 as resolution R-263677). These were specific to the safety of potable reuse

applications, and were later collectively called the Health Effects Study. Under the

guidance of a Health Advisory Committee, the studies would be conducted at the Aqua II

and Aqua III plants by the Western Consortium for Public Health, a nonprofit

organization representing Public Health programs from San Diego State University,

UCLA, and UC-Berkeley. The findings would later be evaluated by the California

Health Department to determine whether potable reuse of the treated wastewater posed a

public health risk relative to the raw water sources currently in use (Olivieri, Eisenberg,

& Cooper, 1998, p.523).

By July 1985, construction of the second treatment plant in Mission Valley had completed and the Aqua II plant was operational, with a capacity of 300,000 gallons per day. The treatment process included constructed wetlands with water hyacinths, in conjunction with ultra-filtration, reverse osmosis, carbon absorption, and chlorine disinfection. Wastewater treated at this plant was tested in a five-year health effects study, following the City Council’s approval of the $4.2 million contract with the

Western Consortium for Public Health (resolution R-263677). The long-term monitoring, including lab tests animals, was funded 87% through state and federal grants to determine any public health risk (Ristine, 1985). In addition, the Vector Biology and Control

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Branch of the California Health Department required a special vector surveillance program to monitor for mosquitoes predicted to breed in the constructed wetlands.

The Murky Waters of Taste.

The aquaculture project manager, Steve Pearson, estimated at this time that water treated through the aquaculture system would not be used as potable water until sometime between 1990 and 2000 (Balint, July 23, 1985). However, less than a week after the contract for the long-term health effects study was signed, Pearson coordinated a public

“taste-test” in collaboration with the San Diego Evening Tribune. This was hosted at an upscale restaurant where wine tastings were regularly held. The article covering the event, “Testing the Murky Waters of Taste” (Balint, July 23, 1985), describes a brand-X and brand-Y comparison with patrons being split on their preference between San Diego tap water and water treated at the aquaculture plant. Here, taste was the sole evaluative criterion, and Pearson, with the plant’s maintenance supervisor, Frank Diaz, in attendance, explained that the treated water would have a stronger chlorine taste due to the disinfection process needed to kill bacteria.

The plan for indirect potable reuse was to discharge the treated water into the city’s reservoir, where it would mix with the municipal water supply. But, at the restaurant city officials were drinking the treated wastewater water directly from the aquaculture plant and promoting it for potable use before any studies had been conducted, and against California’s water code regulations. The article concludes with a quote from

Diaz: “We drink it every day, that’s possible if you can just block where it came from”

(Balint, 1985 p.B1), an acknowledgement of an anticipated public acceptance issue.

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Since 1972, attitudinal surveys on the topic of water reclamation found 45% to 60% of respondents opposed the idea of potable reuse, regardless of the degree of treatment

(Dishman, Sherrard, & Rebhun, 1989). However, the aquaculture project, through to this time, had received unchallenged support from the City Council, who considered the health effects study a red-tape project that was required “to prove to health officials [at the state level] that the sewage treated partly by hyacinths can be made safe enough to drink” (Ristine, 1985). Put differently, city water officials and certain members of the

City Council already had a mindset that indirect potable reuse was safe enough to be implemented.

Community Opposition: “Not In My Backyard”.

The city of San Diego had initially planned for construction of a third aquaculture demonstration plant on a parcel at Lake Hodges, the community park for the Rancho

Bernardo area (Council of the city of San Diego, 1984). This was to be a $10 million sewage treatment facility, and the site chosen was an 18-acre parcel that included a defunct sewage treatment plant and pump station, decommissioned in 1978. As the area’s population grew, the Lake Hodges sewage treatment plant frequently became overloaded and area residents complained about the odor. Instead of upgrading the plant,

Rancho Bernardo elected to join the San Diego’s Metropolitan system and was then served by the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant.

When the city of San Diego released its plans for the Rancho Bernardo

Reclamation Plant in the summer of 1985, which included expanding the site to 35 acres to accommodate the constructed wetlands, the Rancho Bernardo Planning Board and the

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Rancho Bernardo Community Council vetoed the project. An article published in The

Evening Tribune, “Residents Cry Foul Over Plant Rancho Bernardo Sewage Facility”

(Balint, Oct. 1, 1985) highlights the conflict between Rancho Bernardo and the city of

San Diego. From the city of San Diego’s perspective, Rancho Bernardo was an ideal site because the basic infrastructure of pipes and a pump station was already in place. The city water department owned the land, and planned to use the treated effluent to irrigate the park. In times of drought the first water reductions are to the parks, and the city of

San Diego emphasized that without the reclamation plant Rancho Bernardo would stand to lose money in landscaping and recreation during water shortages. However, when

City Council member, Bill Mitchell, surveyed Rancho Bernardo residents on the issue, the community’s response was to find other uses the land. Suggestions ranged from alternative public uses, such as converting it into a nature preserve with hiking and jogging trails, to privatizing its use by selling it to a developer that would build a golf course. Community Council President, William Schurr, summarized that regardless of how the land was going to be used, “It’s plainly evident that the majority of people in

Rancho Bernardo don’t want a sewage treatment plant in their backyard” (Balint, Oct. 1,

1985).

The outcome for Rancho Bernardo was that, in 1985, Regency Associates negotiated a lease with the city of San Diego to build a public golf course, agreeing to set aside 35 acres for the aquaculture facility with the expectation that the water would be used for irrigation (Balint, 1987). However, in 1987, due to resident opposition, Regency modified its plans to exclude the reclamation plant, and used the acreage as part of the

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golf course (Balint, 1987). The developer ultimately figured it was better to have the

good will of Rancho Bernardo residents than to further the city of San Diego’s

reclamation ambitions and save money on its irrigation costs.

“Not in my backyard” is a thematic frame that was also expressed by residents of

neighboring communities who generally supported the idea of wastewater reclamation,

but somewhere else. In Carlsbad, thirty miles north of the city of San Diego, the local

sewage district had proposed a wastewater reclamation plan as part of a $15 million

restoration project for Batiquitos Lagoon, but property owners of the land surrounding

the lagoon objected to the idea of reclaimed water in the lagoon out of concern over foul

odors, mosquitoes, real and perceived health risks, and deleterious effects on their

property values (Petrillo, 1985). Ten miles south, a similar plan had also been proposed

for San Elijo Lagoon. Voters defeated the idea for reasons similar to those already

mentioned. However, in this case the proposed reclamation facility would have been

close to the downtown area of Cardiff-By-The-Sea and there was the added concern over

the odors adversely affecting local businesses (Petrillo, 1985).

Caltrans Celebration: “Good Enough to Drink”.

Since 1984, the city of San Diego had worked towards an agreement with the

California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to sell Caltrans treated effluent from the Aqua II plant for irrigating highway medians. In early 1987, contracts were finalized,

and on August 14th of that year, the plan, which conserved enough drinking-quality

water to supply 2,400 homes, was put into effect (Hughes, 1987; LaRue, 1987). This was

an important milestone for the aquaculture project because it created a market for the

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treated effluent where none existed. The cost of the treated effluent was about an eighth

that of San Diego County Water Authority’s imported water, but the high start-up cost of

a conveyance system was a deterrent. Caltrans invested $80,000 to cover the cost of

pumping station and the pipes needed to transfer the water to its existing freeway

irrigation system. By Caltrans’ estimate, it would take from five to ten years of water cost savings to recover this investment (LaRue, 1987). However, there were two immediate benefits to Caltrans for entering into the contract. The first was that water for freeway irrigation would be guaranteed, even in times of drought. The second was that it was a good public and organizational relations strategy. Caltrans would enjoy the goodwill of San Diegans, and especially those who had previously complained about the wastefulness of watering the medians during drought conditions. Importantly, the agreement provided Caltrans some added clout with the city of San Diego, and its representatives on the state legislature, which, assumedly might later be used for pursuing other agendas.

A certain tripartite political chumminess is suggested from media coverage of the switch-on ceremony that was held to energize the electric irrigation pump and celebrate the event. California Assembly member, Larry Stirling, Caltrans district director,

William Dotson, and City Council member, Judy McCarty, together did the honors. But, more interesting, the three publicly “toasted the occasion with reclaimed sewage cocktails topped by maraschino cherries” (LaRue, 1987, p. B7). In an article describing this display, Stirling admitted, “the law restricts the use of reclaimed water,” and that he and the other government officials had

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…committed a minor technical violation of Title 22 of the State Administrative Code as a minor act of civil disobedience to illustrate that the liquid is safe to drink, it meets bacterial and other standards for drinking water, even though human consumption is not permitted under the code. (LaRue, 1987, p. B7)

The article includes a photograph of Larry Stirling pouring the effluent into cocktail glasses, with the caption:

Good enough to drink: Assemblyman Larry Stirling pours water, which is certified safe and potable, at the city aquaculture plant near the stadium. Officials drank the water in a toast to the county’s first large-scale project using recycled water for freeway landscaping.

Notably, as the caption indicates, the water consumed during the ceremony was not from the plant that supplied Caltrans its irrigation water, but from the original, smaller capacity reverse osmosis facility at Jack Murphy Stadium. The act of drinking the treated water seems a rather flagrant publicity stunt that was largely intended to naturalize the idea of consuming treated wastewater. This is the social construction of a frame for indirect potable reuse that predates the public awareness and acceptance campaign for the city’s reservoir augmentation proposal.

Conference on Water Reclamation: “How Do You Sell It?”

Two months following the Caltrans celebration, the city of San Diego hosted the second-annual conference on water reclamation, which highlighted the Caltrans contract as part of its “Making it Happen” theme. The conference provided a forum for papers on the latest reclamation technologies, but also included moderated discussions of the politics of reclamation, and how to overcome unfavorable public attitudes. One of the conference speakers, David Kennedy, CDWR director, stated that the ultimate question addressed by the conference was “How do you sell it (water reclaimed from sewage) to

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the consumer” (Sherman, 1987)? The “selling it” problem for the water officials, with

regard to potable ruse, was the public’s perception of risk and negative attitude toward drinking treated sewage, as both factors repeatedly surfaced as a theme in interviews and surveys on the topic (Dishman et al., 1989).

The surveys conducted from the 1970s to the mid-1980s generally found support

for reclamation applications was negatively correlated with the degree or likelihood of

human contact: Only about 2% to 6% opposed use of reclaimed water for irrigating

lawns, parks, and golf courses, surface water augmentation without human contact (e.g.,

golf course hazard lakes), and industrial uses (e.g., boiler feed water); from about 7% to

21% opposed use for crop irrigation, with less opposition to use for animal feed crops

than for fruits and vegetables; 15% to 25% were opposed to use in recreational areas

where swimming was permitted; 23% to 40% opposed the idea of groundwater recharge

via injection wells; and from 55% to 67% of those surveyed opposed to the idea potable

reuse (Bruvold et al., 1981; Dishman et al., 1989).

The major obstacle to broadening the market for the least objectionable uses for treated wastewater was the cost of conveyance. Reservoir augmentation, mixing treated wastewater into the municipal supply, was a way to create a built-in market and distribute

the water without investing in a large infrastructure, though, at the time, the construction

of a large infrastructure was a water policy option being investigated. However,

realistically, the effort would be towards increasing public acceptance through a gradual

naturalization and normalization process. This is described by public health engineer, C.

Michael Dishman and associates (1989):

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It is possible to gradually alter the public opinion regarding use of reclaimed waters. By initially allowing only the sight of reclaimed waters and then progressing to every higher contact uses, a public may eventually accept drinking reclaimed waters. Santee, California’s reuse project is an example of this idea. Santee initiated its reuse program in 1959 with impound of the water and human contact, except by sight, was prohibited. In 1961, boating was allowed on the lake. Later fishing was allowed. Finally, in 1965, the town opened a public swimming pool which was filled with reclaimed water. At that point in the program, Santee residents expressed a willingness to drink the water. Many, in fact, thought their public water system was already distributing reclaimed water for domestic use (p.157; also see Bruvold, 1985).

“Peace Plan” Water-Swap.

In March 1987, state legislation was proposed authorizing a two-year DWR study

on the issue. The bill was sponsored by Assembly member, Steve Peace, of Chula Vista,

and the “Peace plan,” as it was called in the press, was essentially a “water-swap” between the city of San Diego and neighboring agricultural Imperial County to the north

(Carson, 1987). San Diego would receive Imperial’s share of waters from the Colorado

River in exchange for treated wastewater, which would be used for irrigation, and to dilute the sewage-polluted New River. This would require a complex of pipelines, canals, pumping stations and new sewage treatment plants linking the Imperial Irrigation

District with the city of San Diego’s water and sewer system. The “Peace Plan” also called for a direct connection from San Diego east to the Colorado River, which would increase the city of San Diego’s autonomy from the Metropolitan Water District

(Weintraub, 1987).

The water exchange idea had been proposed a decade earlier by then San Diego

County Supervisor, Lucille Moore, but Imperial County farmers balked at the idea of using treated wastewater effluent over concerns of bacterial contamination, public

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perception, and, ultimately, negative economic impact. However, in 1985, chemical

precipitation of organic solids, called chemically enhanced or advanced primary

treatment, was added to the treatment processes at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment

Plant, achieving removal rate of 70% to 75% total suspended solids; comparatively,

biological treatment, as required under the Clean Water Act, removes 85% . With

advanced primary treatment, the resulting effluent would be suitable for irrigating certain

types of crops, and if not used for this purpose it would otherwise be discharged into the

ocean.

But Peace proposed his plan without consulting Imperial Valley local officials,

and was criticized for acting without their input (“Stories of the Past,” 2007). Supervisor

Val Blume, Imperial County Board of Supervisors board chairwoman, publicly

condemned Peace’s “arrogance” for the “way he overstepped his bounds.” Supervisor

James Bucher called the plan “hare-brained.” There was also opposition from

reclamation proponents, such as San Diego’s Assembly representative, and former City

Council member Larry Stirling, who supported the idea of developing reclamation and

reuse technologies as an alternative to building a secondary treatment plant and the

infrastructure required for water transfers (“Stories of the Past,” 2007).

A third complication to the water-swap plan was the Boulder Canyon Project

Agreement of 1931, which stipulated that (a) the Imperial Irrigation District’s allocation of Colorado River water had to be used beneficially and exclusively for the Lower Palo

Verde Mesa, and (b) the Coachella Valley Water District had next-priority rights to any waters not used by the Imperial Irrigation District (LaRue, December 18, 1998). That is,

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even if it wanted to, the Imperial Irrigation District could not transfer its allocation of

Colorado River water to San Diego without involving the Coachella Valley Water

District as an interested party. With the objections from the Imperial County Board of

Supervisors, the potential policy alternatives of reclamation and reuse proposed by

Stirling, and complications with the Coachella Valley Water District as a third-party,

Peace’s proposal for a water-swap was stalled, and would not be renewed on the water

policy agenda for another decade.

Aqua II: Initial Virus Study Results.

In July 1989, after three years of testing at the Mission Valley Aqua II facility, the

Western Consortium for Public Health presented the first part of the microbiology section

of its health effects study. This section of the study was designed to investigate the virus

removal efficacy of the Aqua II pond and its other advanced water treatment methods.

To test this, the Western Consortium for Public Health scientists seeded the effluent with

poliovirus and a tracer chemical. The findings were that hyacinth ponds alone removed

88% to 99% of the added poliovirus, and after the complete treatment process none of the

seeded viruses were recovered in the final effluent (Olivieri, Eisenberg, & Cooper, 1998).

The study findings were reported in the mainstream media, but with varying

policy implications (Balint, 1989; Curran-Downey, 1989; Johnson, 1989). Two of the articles (Curran-Downey, 1989; Johnson, 1989) regarded the study results as

“encouraging” for increased agricultural and irrigation use, but fell short of endorsing potable reuse applications. The other (Balint, 1989) interpreted the research conclusions to suggest that although, at the time, it was illegal in California to use reclaimed water for

152 drinking purposes, the “water reclaimed from sewage could someday offer hope of an alternative water supply in San Diego.” The article quotes one of the microbiologists from the Western Consortium for Public Health, who described how the treated water could be added to reservoirs to mix with drinking water imported from the Colorado

River and from Northern California.

Following the release of the study’s the San Diego City Council passed an ordinance that mandated “reclaimed water to be used for irrigation of golf courses, parks and greenbelts wherever suitable” (Balint, 1989). Also, the same week the study findings were released, the Evening Tribune published an Op Ed column, “Reclaimed Water is a

Source of ‘New’ Water for California,” written by state senator from San Diego, Larry

Stirling. In it, Stirling details the dual problem of (a) the unlikelihood of a Peripheral

Canal to transfer water from Northern California due to costs and continued opposition from Bay-Delta interests, and (b) the requirements set by the Environmental Protection

Agency to improve the quality of the water being discharged into the ocean. The solution proposed by Stirling, outlined in Senate Bill 488, was to expand reclamation efforts by having Caltrans “install pipelines in freeway right-of-way to carry reclaimed water from local agencies’ treatment plants to parks, golf courses, cemeteries, etc., where it can be used and at the same time provide lines for use in watering freeway landscaping.” An amended version of the bill passed, and Caltrans was mandated to provide freeway pipeline access to reclamation facilities with potential downline water customers.

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USA v. The City of San Diego

In 1986, wastewater treatment was a topic of many City Council debates. There were repeated sewage spills that resulted in quarantines in Mission Bay, Penasquitos

Lagoon and several of San Diego’s beaches, and there was also a continuing problem of untreated sewage flowing across the border from Tijuana (Flynn, 1986). The problems with the Metropolitan Sewage System had first been reported to the Regional Water

Quality Control Board in 1979, when Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant had become overloaded, exceeding its capacity 60% of the time (Jacobs, 1979). The situation had become serious enough that the U.S. EPA refused to extend the city of San Diego’s

temporary Clean Water Act ocean discharge waiver, and tentatively denied the city’s revised application that had been submitted in 1983. The city had amended the application to allow larger volumes of wastewater to be treated at the Point Loma facility, which had already become overloaded (USA v. City of San Diego, 1994). San Diego could reapply for a waiver, but the city was mandated to be in compliance with Clean

Water Act secondary treatment requirements by July 1988 (Copeland, 2010).

Under the California Ocean Plan, which regulates ocean discharges at the state- level, 1988 was also be the year when the California Department of Health would begin enforcement of human body-contact health standards for bacteria levels in the kelp beds affected by the Point Loma outfall (Flynn, 1986). Even though the discharge outfall was two and a half miles off shore, well beyond the Point Loma kelp forest, ocean currents would at times carry plumes of effluent towards the shore and into the kelp beds. The city conducted field studies that found the discharges were not harmful to divers or the

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kelp beds, and used these findings as a basis for a waiver from the new body-contact

health standards. However, in 1986, the California Regional Water Quality Control

Board for San Diego denied the city’s application, and the new standards were to be enforced, beginning 1988 (Cost-Effective Planning to Dispose of Waste Water in a Safe,

Healthy, and Environmentally Sound Manner, 1993, p.5).

At this time, the aquaculture demonstration projects were not well enough developed to where reclamation could be considered a near-future solution. The City

Council had asked the city water utilities director, Armand Campillo, about the possibility of reclamation as an alternative to secondary treatment, and Campillo’s response was that it was neither technically nor economically viable on a large-scale basis. The issues cited included the costs of treating the water, the heavy concentration of salt in the region’s wastewater, and concerns over the public safety of using recycled water (Flynn, 1986). The position taken by the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club was that, rather than build a large secondary treatment plant for the Metropolitan Sewage

System, the city should construct several small reclamation plants located closer to new housing developments, and require the new developments to install dual piping systems so that the reclaimed water would be used immediately recycled for landscape irrigation and other nonpotable uses (LaRue, 1986).

As an alternative to a secondary sewage treatment plant, the City Council began to examine the idea of extending the outfall of the Point Loma facility from 2.5 miles out from the shoreline at a depth of 220 feet below water to 4.5 miles at a depth of 320 feet.

This would be far enough off shore that the kelp beds wouldn’t be affected by drifting

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plumes of bacteria. It was a solution uniquely suited to San Diego’s topography because

its ocean floor slopes into deep waters only a few miles off shore into the open Pacific

Ocean, where fast moving currents would churn and dilute wastewater discharges off

Point Loma (Cost-Effective Planning to Dispose of Waste Water in a Safe, Healthy, and

Environmentally Sound Manner, 1993).

The cost of extending the outfall was at the time estimated at $100 million (Flynn,

1986). This was an inexpensive policy option relative to the cost of a secondary sewage treatment system, which was initially estimated to cost about $1 billion, though, later,

figures of $2.3 billion and then $4 billion, when financing costs and inflation were

calculated, were “thrown into the public arena” (Smolens, 1991). City of San Diego

Mayor, Maureen O’Connor, had planned to seek federal assistance for construction of a secondary treatment plant, but, in 1986, President Reagan vetoed the Clean Water Act amendments that would have authorized funding. Instead, the Water Quality Act of 1987 included the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF), which provided below-

market-rate loans to municipalities to comply with the Clean Water Act biological

treatment standards. Cities that had acted earlier to upgrade their wastewater treatment

facilities had received funding up to 90% of the project costs in state and federal Clean

Water grants, but upgrades to the Point Loma plant and the construction of a new

treatment facility would have to be financed through water rate increases (Flynn, 1986).

In February 1987, the city withdrew its application for a Clean Water Act ocean

discharge waiver and attempted a consent decree with the U.S. EPA for federal funding

to build a secondary treatment plant. These negotiations failed. According to City

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Council member Bruce Henderson, the U.S. EPA had misled the City Council into rushed timeframe for making the decision to withdraw the waiver, and also into thinking there would be federal money available for the project, when there wasn’t (Horstman, 1990).

In July 1988, the U.S. EPA and State of California initiated a civil enforcement action against the city of San Diego (Frammolino, 1988). There was no waiver application, and no secondary treatment plant, and so the city was not in compliance with the Clean Water Act. The suit cited five years of Clean Water Act violations since 1983, alleging that raw sewage has spilled into the ocean and local waterways from defective sewer lines and failed pump stations 1,814 times over the past five years, and that the city of San Diego had violated its discharge permit by illegally dumping sludge at its abandoned Brownfield treatment plant 92 times since 1984. The suit sought civil fines from $10,000 to $25,000 per day for each violation, and requested that the federal court require the city to construct a secondary sewage treatment plant and repair its existing facilities (Frammolino, 1988). The California Regional Water Quality Control Board joined the U.S. EPA as a plaintiff to the suit because the city also had also failed to achieve standards for bacteria levels in the kelp beds affected by the Point Loma outfall, as required under the California Ocean Plan.

In May 1989, the court divided the case into remedial and penalty phases. During the penalty phase, the judge, Rudi Brewster, fined the city $3 million, but allowed a $2.5 million credit towards a water conservation program, which the city of San Diego enacted by ordinance in 1991. This included public education and outreach services, including a media campaign and a residential survey program that provided water use analysis, leak

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checks, water saving equipment, like low-flow shower heads, and recommendations for

water-efficient landscaping and irrigation (Berhman, 1991, Aguirre, 1997).

For the remedial phase, the parties entered in negotiation towards a consent

decree in which the city would be provided federal grants that would partially fund the

upgrade of the Point Loma facility to secondary treatment, and the construction of a new

secondary treatment plant at North Bay and six water reclamation satellite facilities that

would be completed in phases through 1999 (USA v. City of San Diego, 1991). In

March 1990, the court found the agreement to be an acceptable solution, and approved it

for publication in the federal register for public comment. However, in August 1990,

after publication of the decree, the Sierra Club, with Emily Durbin, and San Diego City

Council member Bruce Henderson, intervened as plaintiffs in the case and blocked the

proposed consent decree on the grounds that the agreement was not in the public’s interest (USA v. City of San Diego, 1991).

The intervenors requested the court consider as points of public interest: beneficial use of reclaimed water, with higher reuse requirements for wastewater treated at the reclamation plants, and at a more accelerated schedule; Point Loma treatment options, with a plant-scale pilot investigation into whether implementing additional physical-chemical treatment solutions at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant would provide the same level of treatment as biological treatment, which, if successful, would obviate the cost and environmental impact associated with the construction of the biological treatment facility contemplated in the original decree; a plan for sludge reuse, so that additional sludge generated from new wastewater treatment plants would not

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overburden county landfills; water conservation measures, which, if enacted, would

reduce the volume of wastewater treated by the City (U.S. and State of California v. City

of San Diego, 1991).

In June 1991, Judge Rudi Brewster ruled not to “rubber stamp” the decree, but to

defer final judgment until January 1993, with the stipulations that the city of San Diego

would: continue to meet the milestones established in its partial consent decree; conduct a

one-year pilot test at the Point Loma facility to ascertain whether additional physical- chemical treatment would meet the EPA requirements for secondary treatment; and

develop a water reuse master plan to maximize wastewater recycling. According to John

Witt, the City Attorney, Judge Brewster’s attitude toward the Partial Consent Decree was favorable, and the deferral time was ordered to allow more for information on the effects of “conservation, water reuse demand and pilot tests at Point Loma to better assess the provisions of the city’s partial consent decree” (Witt, 1991). Although the U.S. EPA and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board continued to favor approval of the consent decree submitted in 1990, the city had changed its position and opposed the decree as a “political disaster” because the overbuilding sewage treatment capacity and reclamation capacity would be unacceptable to the communities that would have to pay

the costs (USA v. City of San Diego, 1994, p.9).

Epoch 3: The 1992 to 1999

Consumers’ Alternative.

In February 1992, an outfall pipe at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant

ruptured, causing one of the most massive sewage spills in national history (Granberry,

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1992). Up to 180 million gallons of partly treated sewage was discharged each day for

just over two months (Lee, 1992). At this time, Judge Brewster modified his interim

order to allow the city of San Diego to proceed immediately with projects included in

what he called the “Consumers’ Alternative,” a scaled-down comprise plan that “required less action and more relaxed deadlines than the consent decree” (USA v. City of San

Diego, p.11). The Consumers’ Alternative required construction of the Point Loma outfall extension by September 1994 (as opposed to upgrading the plant to secondary treatment); completion of the North City Water Reclamation Plant to be completed by

July 1998, which was only one of six required in the consent decree; and various capital improvement projects for the municipal sewer system, all which were urgently needed.

Following the modified order, the City Council set a new course of wastewater management policy to: stay at advance primary treatment at the Point Loma facility, and extend its outfall; repair and upgrade its sewer system for planned growth; expand the city’s water conservation program; establish the phase-in of the city’s water reclamation program (City of San Diego, 1992).

For the three years following the deferral, the City had accomplished two notable feats. First, in November 1993, the city had completed the outfall extension at the Point

Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, which eliminated the bacterial contamination to the kelp beds. Second, as a result of the one-year pilot program, the Point Loma facility was removing up to 85% of total dissolved solids with advanced primary treatment, which was equal to that which would be achieved with biological treatment required by the

Clean Water Act. However, there were other standards, such as a maximum of 30 mg/l

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biological oxygen demand (BOD) and maximum of 30 mg/l total suspended solids (TSS);

the advanced primary treatment did exceed the threshold limit values for these standards

(USA v. City of San Diego, 1994).

When the Point Loma facility met the bacterial standards of the California Ocean

Plan, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board realigned from plaintiff to defendant, and argued that the secondary treatment plants outlined in the consent decree were unnecessary (USA v. City of San Diego, 1994). At this point, all parties involved, except the U.S. EPA, were opposed to the consent decree submitted in 1990. The Sierra

Club argued the consent decree was “wasteful in over-building unnecessary satellite plants, and illegal in requiring all satellite plants to treat all sewage to tertiary standards, even though it appears most of it will be dumped immediately into the ocean” (USA v.

City of San Diego, 1994, p.6). It supported construction of new treatment facilities, but only when necessary, and with reclamation and reuse whenever possible.

City Council member Bruce Henderson, as an intervenor, opposed the massive capital program required under the consent decree, and sought instead to obtain an ocean discharge waiver. Henderson argued that with the new outfall extension at the Point

Loma facility, the marine environment was not only unharmed, but had been improved:

The larger outfall increased the total biomass of organisms in the area of the new discharge (USA v. City of San Diego, 1994, p.7).

In March 1994, Judge Brewster concluded that the consent decree was not in the public interest, and should be rejected. In the judge’s opinion, the consent decree required the city of San Diego to spend billions of dollars in unnecessary wastewater

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treatment that would result in increased sludge production and provide no benefit to the

oceanic environment. The frame invoked by Brewster was that the “Plaintiff is trying to

enter a Rolls Royce in the Grand Prix. It is just not going to win” (USA v. City of San

Diego, 1994, pp.20-21). There was no popular support for it, no economic support, and no political support. The consent decree, according to Brewster, “would sentence the supervising court to constantly hearing motions to modify the Rolls Royce into a

Formula-1” (p.21). Instead, Brewster ruled that “the consent decree should be rejected and the parties should agree on a Formula-1 of their choice. If they cannot agree, they should proceed to trial” (USA v. City of San Diego, 1994, p.21). In August 1994, he issued an interim order that the city complete the projects listed in the Consumers’

Alternative plan.

Clean Water Act Waiver Granted.

Although the court’s rejection of the consent decree did not require the city of San

Diego to implement biological treatment for the Point Loma facility, the City was still not in compliance with the Clean Water Act because it did not have a section 301(h) waiver from secondary treatment. The administrative complication was that the statutory deadline for the waiver application had long since expired, and an amendment to the

Clean Water Act would be needed to allow the city of San Diego to reapply.

The city of San Diego worked with legislators and the Sierra club to pass legislation that would allow the city to reapply for a waiver. In July 1993, the congressional Subcommittee on Environment and Natural Resources held a special hearing in San Diego on “Cost-effective Planning to Dispose of Wastewater in a Safe,

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Healthy, and Environmentally Friendly Manner.” This followed the publication of

findings from a study conducted by the National Research Council (1993), which had

recommended that the U.S. EPA, rather than apply a uniform standard, consider of

environmental differences in its enforcement of the Clean Water Act, and provide

waivers for deep ocean discharges. The National Academy of Sciences report (1993) had

essentially challenged the 1970s frame of a uniform standard for wastewater treatment,

and introduced the new 1990s paradigm of integrated coastal management, which

emphasized reclamation and reuse.

In October 1994, President Clinton signed into law the Ocean Pollution Reduction

Act, which amended the Clean Water Act to allow the city of San Diego six months to

apply for an ocean discharge variance, but required the city to implement a 45 million

gallon per day wastewater reclamation program by 2010 (DePledge, 1994). When the

waiver was approved by the U.S. EPA in 1995, one of the notable stipulations was that it

limited the sewage treated Point Loma facility to the current year’s amount, and “all

future growth within the Metropolitan Sewage System would have to be treated to

tertiary levels (suitable for irrigation use)” (Christianson, 1995, p.G3). However, this requirement would be met with federal assistance towards the construction of the North

City Water Reclamation Plant, completed in 1997, and the South Bay Water Reclamation

Plant, completed in 2002.

At the time the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act was passed, there are perhaps two external factors that appear to be influential in the city’s push for the reclamation projects, in addition to the $45.5 million in federal assistance approved by Congress

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under the 1995 Appropriations Act (P.L. 103-327). The first is the ending of the Cold

War era, and the second is the recession of the early 1990s. San Diego Mayor, Susan

Golding, notes that “the simultaneous occurrence of these two events resulted in the worst economic downturn in the San Diego region since the Great Depression” (City of

San Diego, 1997, p.1). From 1990 to 1993, the decline in the aerospace industry and other military-related industrial sectors resulted in a loss of 58,000 jobs and a 13% decrease in median per capita income for the San Diego region (City of San Diego,

1997). The reclamation projects, including the proposal for reservoir augmentation, provided some stimulus for local contractors. In the larger picture, they would provide a guaranteed water supply, which the city believed was necessary to attract new businesses to the area. Also, these projects were seen as foundational to the “environmental technologies” industrial cluster of the “new economy” Golding proposed to include in

Charting the Course for the 21st Century, the city’s economic development plan (City of

San Diego, 1997).

The “new economy,” as defined in Charting the Course, was a new economic

frame that focused on export-oriented, technology-driven industries, such as

telecommunications, biotechnology, and environmental technology. This would contrast

with the former “Navy Town” framework, in which, since the early 1900s, city officials

and the city Chamber of Commerce believed the federal defense spending was “an engine

of growth holding more promise than other more conventional means” (Shragge, 2002,

p.231).

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Water Repurification Project.

In August 1993, the city of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority jointly initiated the Water Repurification Program, in which wastewater reclaimed and treated to tertiary-level at the planned North City Reclamation Facility would receive additional advanced treatment at the proposed Repurification plant before being discharged into the San Vicente reservoir to use as a potable water source. This was

undertaken as a capital improvement project (CIP 45-927.0) during the city’s fulfillment of the “Consumers’ Alternative” to the partial consent decree. Since the city was required to construct a large scale tertiary treatment plant for reclamation, the plan was for reclaimed wastewater to be further treated to drinking water standards, after which it would be discharged into the city’s second-largest drinking water reservoir to mix with the potable water supply (Balint, 1995). That is, once the North City Reclamation Plant was completed in 1997, it would have the capacity to provide tertiary treatment for up to

30 million gallons of wastewater per day. However, without a market for the reclaimed water the effluent would be treated to secondary-level and then discharged into the ocean.

The water treated to tertiary-level would be suitable for irrigation, but would be more expensive to produce and transfer than the imported water from existing suppliers.

However, the city of San Diego could create a built-in market for reuse by providing advanced water treatment subsequent to tertiary-level treatment at the North City

Reclamation Plant, and then mixing the effluent with the raw water source. The water generated through indirect potable reuse would still be more expensive than imported

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water, but the price increase would be spread across water and sewer rate increases

(Christianson, 1995).

The initial phase of the project included a feasibility study that was jointly

managed by the city and county water authority, with analysis work and report

preparation contracted to the Montgomery Watson Americas engineering consulting firm

(resolution R-285070). The proposed treatment process was based on reverse osmosis,

and did not include the use of constructed wetlands as an intermediate step. Following

review of the study, the California Department of Health Services approved the concept

in August, 1994 (City of San Diego, 1996). In December 1994, the City Council

established a citizen-based Repurified Water Review Committee and an expert

Independent Advisory Panel (resolution R-285071), both of which critiqued the

feasibility study, which led to subsequent studies and materials testing.

There was also a community outreach component to promote public awareness

and acceptance of the concept. This was managed by Patricia Tennyson, the Public

Affairs Director at the San Diego County Water Authority, with marketing activities

contracted to the communication firm, Sara Katz and Associates, Inc., which was paid

more than $400,000, in total, “to help sell the project to the public” (Balint & Braun,

1998). These included telephone surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews with

various community leaders and policy makers (Balint, March 11, 1998; California

Department of Health Services, 2002; Po et al., 2003). Over a six month period, the public outreach effort distributed 1,800 education packages, and provided 60 presentations to stakeholder groups (Marks, 2006). The firm conducted taste tests, and

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found response to the repurified water was favorable (California Department of Health

Services, 2002). The findings from one component, a $15,000 telephone survey of 500

San Diegans conducted in February 1998, found that once people were briefed on water supply issues and treatment methods, nearly 60% responded that they would drink the

water (Balint, March 11, 1998). Critics of the program, however, distrusted the results

and argued that the “survey questions were skewed as part of a public relations campaign

to sell the public on a bad idea” (Balint, March 11, 1998).

The End of the Aquaculture Project.

At about the same time the feasibility study for the Water Repurification Program was initiated in August 1993, the third and final aquaculture demonstration plant, the San

Pasqual Aquatic Treatment Facility (Aqua III) was nearing completion. When it opened in November 1993 the facility was described in the media “an eco-friendly aquaculture plant that relies on hyacinths, guppies and crayfish to treat sewage” (Berliner, 1993, p.B1). The treatment process included 15 acres of aquaculture ponds with water hyacinths, followed by lime clarification, filtration, ultraviolet light disinfection, and reverse osmosis. The facility also served as the Aqua 2000 Research Center, which was used as a test site for the Environmental Technology Verification program, jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation and U.S. EPA (National Science

Foundation, 2003).

The Aqua III facility cost $23 million to construct and had a treatment capacity of

1 million gallons per day. The plant was located in the San Pasqual Valley to supply irrigation water to agricultural water users, and was publicized as a means to eventually

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supplement the drinking water supply (Berliner, 1993). The hyacinth pond treatment

method, though effective, was expensive to operate, costing $2 million per year to

maintain (Balint, Nov. 16, 1998). It required continuous harvesting and mulching of up

to three tons of hyacinths per day, and the facility was staffed with three on-site

entomologists to monitor for increased mosquito populations (Balint, Nov. 16, 1998).

Even by the time it opened, the water hyacinth ponds were already an inefficient means

of treating water to standards for indirect potable reuse compared to advanced membrane

filtration combined with other treatment steps. This wasn’t always the case, but since the

project’s inception in 1981, filtration technology had advanced considerably.

The Aqua III facility’s manager, Paul Gagliardo, reported in an interview that the

day after the plant opened he received instructions from the head of the Wastewater

Department “to start working on a plan to get rid of the water-hyacinth ponds” (Balint,

Nov. 16, 1998). This couldn’t happen immediately, because under the terms of the

federal “Clean Water” grant that funded the project, the city had to operate the treatment

plant with hyacinth ponds for five years (Balint, Nov. 16, 1998). But, as soon as the

required demonstration period ended in November 1998, the research emphasis shifted

from aquaculture to newer technology, such as thin-membrane filters, reverse osmosis

systems and ozonation treatments. Although aquaculture was not going to be part of the treatment train for the future indirect potable reuse project, the reclamation plant

remained operational and continued to produce and sell water suitable for irrigation. The

Aqua 2000 research center also remained open, “seeking business from other

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governmental agencies, companies and universities who will pay San Diego to do water-

treatment research” (Balint, 1998, p.B1).

Quantification Settlement Agreement.

California, through declarations of a surplus, had regularly exceeded its

allocation of 4.4 million acre-feet by about 600,000 acre-feet annually. The use of

surplus water, the unused portion of Nevada and Arizona’s allocation, resulted in longstanding conflict between the three states. In 1996, Secretary of the Interior, Bruce

Babbit, had ordered no further declarations of surplus until California developed a plan to reduce its consumption. In 1998, the San Diego County Water Authority and the

Imperial Irrigation District signed a 75-year agreement for an annual water transfer of

200,000 acre-feet, which would be managed by the Metropolitan Water District. The

“Peace Treaty” (S.B. 1765) was signed into law as part of California’s plan to reduce its overdraft of Colorado River waters. The water transfer agreement, which went into effect in 2003, would meet about a fourth of San Diego’s projected water needs for 2020, so, by itself, does not represent independence from the Metropolitan Water District, but rather adds “diversification” to San Diego’s water supply “portfolio,” as Maureen

Stapleton, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority explained in an interview (Showley, 2006). The “4.4 Plan” also included $235 million for lining the All

American and Coachella canals with concrete to reduce the amount of water lost in transit

(National Water Rights Digest, 1998).

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“Toilet-to-Tap” and Opposition.

From 1994 to 1998, the Water Repurification Project was endorsed by the

California Department of Health, the U.S. EPA, the Sierra Club, the San Diego County

Medical Society, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a citizen’s advisory panel, the Greater

San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club, and the Surfrider Foundation (Balint,

March 1, 1998). The project, however, was not without controversy. The lead editorial

writer for water issues at the Union-Tribune opposed the idea from the start, and wrote

that the project would be too costly for the amount of water that would be gained

(USEPA, 2004; California Department of Health Services, 2002). The 1994 article

featured an illustration of dog drinking from a toilet bowl while his owner asks him to

“move over” (Hartley, 2006, p.121). This “toilet” frame quickly caught the public’s

attention: “No matter how clean the tests show the treated waste water is, water officials

acknowledged that they must overcome public perception of drinking what was once

sewage, or what they called the yuck factor” (Balint, 1995, p.B1).

The plan was criticized early on by John Christianson (1995), an economics

instructor at San Diego State University, and member of the Water Committee of Citizens

Coordinate for Century 3, a nonprofit civic organization for citizens interested in

planning issues. Christianson wrote that the city, in working with the Sierra Club

towards the Water Repurification project, made a “pathetic blunder,” and calculated the cost of the reclaimed and repurified water at the North City Reclamation Plant would be at least $1,500 per acre foot, whereas water transfers from agricultural districts, contracted through the Metropolitan Water District, cost from $632 to $653 an acre foot.

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He suggested that real reason for the project was to “write off the extra costs of secondary

and tertiary treatment (both essential steps in reclamation) to the sewer bill as opposed to

the water bill, acting, in effect, as a subsidy to reclaimed water” (p.G3).

Elmer Keen, a member of the County Water Authority’s repurified water review committee, also argued that the repurified water would be more far more expensive than the water purchased from irrigation surpluses in the Central Valley, but added environmental issues as an evaluative dimension of the debate: “The repurification process would generate more sludge, produce more truck traffic and use more energy.

Economically and environmentally, it just simply does not pencil out” (Balint, July 6,

1997, p.B1). Supporters of the project, like the Sierra Club had argued that the project made financial sense, because it provided a locally-controlled water source, and that it would reduce ocean pollution, but they did not account for complete costs of the project or consider the more distal environmental ramifications of increased sludge disposal, truck traffic and energy use.

City Council member Reverend George Stevens has been credited with coining the “toilet to tap” slogan in 1998 (Marelius, 2005), though this appears to be a misconception. It previously appeared without any pejorative connotation in an article in the Los Angeles Times, and, to the contrary, “toilet to tap was the phrase that supporters of the project used to denote a futuristic urban environment in which treated waste water would be transferred directly to drinking water pipes” (Leovy, 1997). The “toilet-to-tap” slogan has also been attributed to the caption of an illustration by Paul Horn, “From the toilet to the tap?” (Balint, July 6, 1997), which “in the proud tradition of such graphics as

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‘How a bill becomes law,’ followed the path by which wastewater and raw sewage would

be treated, filtered and returned to the water supply” (Braun, 2007). This descriptor of

the indirect potable reuse concept was also without any negative intonation. The exact

phrase, “toilet-to-tap,” first appears in The San Diego Union-Tribune in December 1997,

in the context of opposition to the concept: “Sewer water can be made fit for faucet,

opponents cry foul” (Balint, Dec. 7, 1997). The author wrote: “Critics say there’s no way

to know, until it’s too late, if the toilet-to-tap project will introduce some as-yet- undiscovered chemical into the drinking water. They point out that even the best technology can fail” (p.A1). In the same article, “toilet to tap” is used five times as the label for the Water Repurification Project:

Others complain that the cost of producing toilet-to-tap water will be at least triple the price of just buying more water from the Colorado River and from Northern California….

When Assemblyman Wayne sent questionnaires to constituents last month, 80 percent of respondents opposed the toilet-to-tap project….

Rick Gersberg, a professor of environmental health at San Diego State University and a technical consultant on the project, is already concerned about a new discovery: estrogenic chemicals… Nonetheless, Gersberg is a strong supporter of the toilet-to-tap project. He says it “appears to be a safe process”…

City officials say the key to protecting the public’s health in the toilet-to-tap project is the “multiple barriers,” or multiple treatments, the sewage water will receive...

Dr. Herschel Griffin is a panelist on a National Research Council committee exploring the health issues of repurified water. The epidemiologist maintains precautions being taken by San Diego will make the toilet-to-tap water no more of a health risk for San Diegans than the existing water supply. (p.A1)

Thereafter, the slogan “toilet-to-tap” is casually used within the body text of Union-

Tribune articles covering the Water Repurification Project, and beginning in March 1998

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is incorporated in the headlines, “Research may stall recycled water plan, proponent

seeks more toilet-to-tap studies” (Balint, March 1, 1998). A water-recycling trade

publication later suggested the “toilet to tap” slogan derailed any possibility of a level-

headed debate over the project: “Like magic, the three little words can turn a rational discussion about a scientifically sound—and age old—water source into an emotionally charged debate about human health” (Hanna, 2001). At that time, Harry Mathis, chair of the City Council’s Natural Resources and Culture Committee, which oversees the city’s

wastewater projects, first proposed a one-year delay for the Water Repurification Project

to garner more public support for the concept before moving forward with it. Council

members, Valerie Stallings and Byron Wear supported additional studies “to help allay

any fears the public may have about the project” (Balint, March 5, 1998).

Reverend Stevens, a long-time civil rights activist, for example, vehemently

opposed the project, which would primarily affect the residents of his district. He

organized a small group of citizens, about 40 people, to protest the project to the City

Council. The article covering the event, “Toilet to Tap a Hard Sell, Officials Find”

(Balint, July 30, 1998), quotes negative sentiment toward the concept: “I’m not drinking from somebody else’s toilet,” said Reverend Robert Ard, pastor of Christ Church of San

Diego; “It doesn’t matter who you bring in to tell us the water is going to be purified or germ-free,” said Zoneice Jones of Oak Park, “I won’t even drink my own waste, so I know I won’t drink somebody else’s” (p.B3). Stevens drew on an “environmental injustice frame” on the basis of race and economic factors (e.g., see Sapat, Vos, & Thai,

2002). He argued that the project was an “experiment,” and aligned himself with City

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Council member Juan Vargas, and former City Council member Bruce Henderson, to stop the project on the grounds that it would transform the sewage from the more affluent parts of the city into drinking water for the poorer neighborhoods (Balint, Dec. 7, 1997).

This argument was picked up by radio talk show hosts and activists for the Black and

Latino communities who criticized the government for “using them as human guinea pigs” (Balint, Nov. 12, 1998, p.B1).

The Water Purification Project became a target in political campaigns during the race for congressional, state assembly, and city council elections. In 1998, Howard

Wayne, a State Assembly member who opposed the Water Repurification Project held special “toilet to tap” hearings on the matter, which provided a forum for the project’s critics. A quote from an article in the Wall Street Journal captures Wayne’s concerns over San Diego’s future status as a tourist destination: “Do you want to come to San

Francisco and see the Golden Gate, or do you want to go to San Diego and drink sewage”

(Kravetz, 1998, p.B1)? As part of his campaign against the project, Wayne mailed surveys to constituents asking whether they supported “drinking sewage” (USEPA, 2004, p.235).

Retired school teacher, Muriel Watson, and Mary Quartiano, founded the grass roots organization, “The Revolting Grandmas.” They attended all the hearings and public meetings on the Water Repurification Project to speak against it. In letters they wrote to the media and elected officials, they objected to the secrecy that surrounded the development of the project in its pilot stages from 1984 to 1993, the lack of public participation in decision-making, and to potential health risks (Watson & Quartiano,

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2002). In news articles and at various meetings, they recommended alternatives such as dual piping, and non-potable reuse applications (Watson & Quartiano, 2002).

Repurification Project Delayed.

The proposed Water Repurification Project became controversial enough that, in

November 1998, city water officials proposed to delay the project two years until 2005, which was the estimated completion date for a new pipeline that would connect the San

Vicente Reservoir with one of County Water Authority’s aqueducts (Balint, Nov. 12,

1998). The idea, according to David Schlesinger, director of the city’s Metropolitan

Wastewater Department, was to implement indirect potable reuse throughout the city, and to customers of other water districts in most of the county, as a way to overcome concern that residents from low-income areas were being targeted (Balint, Nov. 12, 1998, p.B1).

The intent was to “allay fears from some of those who were to get the treated sewer water that they were being used as guinea pigs” (Huard, 1998, p.B2).

In December 1998, Mayor Golding announced that she was “suspending further action” on Water Repurification Project by refusing to include the proposal as an agenda item on the City Council’s docket (Balint & Braun, 1998). This effectively froze the project by preventing the City Council from voting on it. The City Council could have overruled her action with a five member majority, but didn’t. Following this announcement, local politicians who had won their seats in “closely contested races” by

“capitalizing on the public’s distaste for the program” expressed their solidarity with

Mayor Goldings’ decision (Balint & Braun, 1998). These included City Council members, Juan Vargas and George Stevens, who were formerly the only City Council

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members opposing to the project; State Senator, Steve Peace (D-El Cajon); and Assembly

members, Howard Wayne (D-San Diego) and Brian Bilbray (R-Imperial Beach) (Balint

& Braun, 1998).

In January 1999, the City Council eliminated the $15 million budget for that

year’s research and construction plans, and resolved that “the City Manager not spend

any monies on water repurification until the council is in the position to take official

action on the issue” (City of San Diego, 1999, p.47). Instead, the $19.1 million was to be

used as needed for upgrades to the sewer system, sewer rate stabilization, and debt

service (City of San Diego, 1999, p.48).

Grand Jury Report.

The matter was investigated by the San Diego County Grand Jury. The grand

jury reviewed the case for indirect potable reuse along three evaluative dimensions:

scientific evidence, costs, and water supply. The scientific evidence was viewed with

regard to public health risks, and grand jury found that there were differing opinions

within the scientific community. The California Department of Health Services certified

the indirect potable reuse program was “acceptable,” and the Water Repurification

Project was supported by the National Blue Ribbon Panel, a panel of scientists from the

National Water Research Institute (Grand Jury Report, 1999). But, a report from the

National Research Council (1998) concluded that “indirect potable reuse is an option of last resort. It should be adopted only if other measures—including other water sources, nonpotable reuse, and water conservation—have been evaluated and rejected as technically or economically infeasible” (p.3). The County of San Diego’s Scientific

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Advisory Board also advised against the reservoir augmentation project because of

chemical contaminants that would not be removed by the proposed treatment methods

(Grand Jury Report, 1999).

With regard to cost, the price of municipal water achieved through reservoir

augmentation was determined to be comparable to the cost of imported water ($440 per

acre foot), but the cost for nonpotable reuse would be more than double ($980 per acre

foot) due to the extensive network of “purple pipes” and other infrastructure required

(Grand Jury Report, 1999). The grand jury found that due to increased demand from other geographical areas and policies made at the state and federal levels of government, imported water was not reliable long-term source, but water for the proposed water repurification project was reliable, since it could be continuously recycled (Grand Jury

Report, 1999).

The grand jury’s (1999) final recommendations were that the city of San Diego should: increase the use of reclaimed water for irrigation and industrial purposes; encourage or mandate water conservation; investigate graywater reuse; explore establishment of a Resource Conservation District, governed by a Board of Directors; and monitor and encourage research into desalination. With regard to the reservoir augmentation project, the grand jury recommended that: “The San Diego City Council should consider the water repurification project as an agenda item. A decision about whether or not to proceed with the project should be made at a public hearing of the full

Council” (at 99-14). And, “the city of San Diego should continue to pursue the water

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repurification project by funding any studies which would ensure the safety of the water”

(at 99-15).

Repurification Project Killed.

In response to the Grand Jury Report, Mayor Golding set the Water Purification

Project as an agenda item for the City Council, and the City Council’s Natural Resources

and Culture Committee officially “killed” the project on March 31, 1999 by unanimous vote (Balint, April 1, 1999). The City Council’s resolution (R-291621), adopted in May

1999, amended the city’s Capital Improvement Program budget by deleting the Water

Repurification Project (CIP 75-929.0). The resolution also authorized $250,000 to fund a

North City Water Reclaimed Water Beneficial Reuse Study, “solely and exclusively” to investigate alternatives to the Water Repurification Project for reclaimed water from the

North City Water Reclamation Plant. This would include other recommendations made by the grand jury, including expanding the market for nonpotable reuse applications.

With the Water Repurification Project cancelled, local news media shifted their attention to other evaluative dimensions of the water-supply issue.

One innovative idea entertained by the City Council was from John Barbieri, president of Natural Resources Corporation, who proposed to use the single-hull oil tankers that were being phased-out as a consequence of the Exxon Valdez oil spill to import water from Canada. With a capacity of 450,000 acre-feet, “a single tanker could stop at various coastal sites, letting cities offload enough water to meet their needs--a modern update of the milkman making his rounds” (Perry, 1999, p.A3). Other ideas were

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seemingly more pragmatic, such as conservation and in-home graywater recycling, which

had become known through the media as “showers-to-flowers” (Rodgers, Feb. 26, 1999).

Showers to Flowers.

“Showers to flowers” was the policy slogan for a variety of subsidies and

incentives directed towards “graywater” reuse, as conservation alternative to the “toilet- to-tap” Water Repurification program. The idea behind “showers-to-flowers” was that graywater treatment systems installed in homes and businesses, would redirect water from bathtubs, showers, bathroom sinks, and washing machines to an on-site filtering system, and the effluent would be used on the premises for underground irrigation. One of the initial proposals from the San Diego County Water Authority was a pilot program in which real estate developers would receive a $250 per unit credit towards their sewer services connection fee for new buildings dual-plumbed for the graywater recycling systems (City of San Diego, 2006).

Advocacy for graywater recycling in the city of San Diego began as early as

1989, when Santa Barbara County legalized residential graywater irrigation, and was the first county in California to do so (County of Santa Barbara, 1990). At the time there were no California state laws specifically against graywater recycling, but there were also no statewide standards for it in the California Plumbing Code, and the practice had been banned by counties throughout the state. In 1991, San Diego declared a drought state of emergency and amended several of the city’s emergency water regulations, which included approval for graywater irrigation, but only under “Stage 4” emergency drought conditions (City of San Diego, 1991).

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This was a small victory for the San Diego graywater conservation movement,

which was led by Steve Bilson, who founded the San Diego-based company, ReWater

Systems, Inc., in 1990 (Kriner, 1999). Bilson then persuaded California Assembly member Byron Sher of Palo Alto to draft and sponsor the bill for the Graywater Systems for Single Family Residences Act of 1992 (Kriner, 1999). The act, which was passed unanimously, directed the California Department of Water Resources, in consultation with Department of Health Services to establish a state code for graywater irrigation by

July 1993. These standards were finally approved in March 1994, and incorporated into the California Plumbing Code. Bilson then participated in the sponsorship of legislation that expanded the Graywater Systems Act to include multi-family, commercial and industrial graywater systems. And, since his company manufactured and held patents to the most widely used commercial graywater systems, he worked closely with the

Department of Water Resources and the Department of Health Services in writing the graywater irrigation code (Kriner, 1999).

In March 1998, Bilson promoted his graywater systems to the San Diego City

Council on the premise that graywater recycling could be part of the Ocean Pollution

Reduction Act settlement (City of San Diego, 1998). City Council member, Juan Vargas, was one of Bilson’s most ardent supporters. Vargas opposed the Water Repurification

Project, and in October 1998 he held a press conference at the Community Concourse near City Hall with the idea that he could replace “toilet to tap” with “showers to flowers” (LaRue, 1998, p.B1). Vargas was quoted as saying, “I’m going to push hard for this, and I hope to kill toilet-to-tap in the process…I have been hearing from constituents

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on this issue. They do not want to drink what they perceive as other people’s toilet water”

(LaRue, 1998, p.B1).

At the conference, Vargas promoted Bilson’s ReWater graywater recycling systems, which would filter chlorine and soap from the drained water and store it in an underground tank, where it would be mixed with potable city water and then pumped to the home irrigation system. The cost of about $3,800 per graywater system would eventually be offset by the amount of water saved. The estimated economic break-even point would be reached somewhere between five and ten years, depending on the water rate, family size and other factors (Rodgers, 1999, p.B1). However, since the water could only be used for irrigation, the graywater systems would reduce potable water use by about 20 percent for a single family home. Another limitation was that the systems were significantly more cost-effective for newly constructed homes. Existing homes could be retrofitted, but it was more expensive, and the systems would be impractical for homes built on slab foundations, where the pipes were encased in cement. Still, in terms of conservation, an estimate by Robert Simmons (1998, p.B9), former attorney for the Sierra

Club and member of the California Water Reuse Foundation Advisory Committee, suggested that a cumulative 62,000 acre-feet of potable water could be saved over a ten year period, enough water to supply 124,000 families for a year.

Vargas, who chaired the San Diego City Council’s Land Use and Housing

Committee, assigned the preliminary feasibility study to committee’s policy consultant.

The report, completed in February 1999, was summarized in the Union-Tribune, with the pilot project’s main benefits being that:

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The home owner will benefit from a reduction in water and sewer rates. The city benefits from added water conservation and savings in waste-water treatment and infrastructure costs. The environment is protected by reduced discharge of waste water into the ocean. (Rodgers, 1999, p.B1)

By a four to one vote, the committee agreed to explore “showers to flowers,” which had also been dubbed, “greening of new growth.” The dissenting vote, cast by council member, Harry Mathis, was based on concern that the homebuilder subsidies would

“benefit new homeowners at the expense of taxpayers and sewer and water ratepayers”

(Rodgers, 1999, p.B1).

In May 1999, the Land Use and Housing Committee further evaluated whether residential graywater recycling was a cost-effective approach to water conservation. San

Diego City Manager, Michael Uberuaga, presented the committee with a cost analysis of the graywater systems, the projected water savings, and other non-economic considerations associated with the reuse of graywater. Uberuaga’s recommendation was that the City should participate in the County Water Authority Graywater Pilot Project, and the issue of graywater recycling was referred to the full City Council (City of San

Diego, 1999).

In November 1999, Vargas announced a pilot project proposal to equip 1,000 new homes with graywater recycling systems with a full subsidy that would cost the city $3.8 million for the systems. That is, Vargas proposed that the City subsidize the purchase and installation of a 1,000 graywater recycling system manufactured by ReWater Systems at a cost $3,800 each (McDonald, 1999, p.B3). Vargas’ plan, which he proposed at the City

Council meeting later that day, was first announced to the media in front of the North

City Water Reclamation Plant. Vargas was a candidate for the 79th District seat being

182 vacated by Assembly member, Denise Ducheny. As part of his campaign platform, he tried to push graywater recycling and other water conservation alternatives to expensive large scale reclamation. The North City Water Reclamation Plant had cost over $200 million to construct and operate, and was dumping 90 percent of its reclaimed water into the Pacific Ocean because there were too few buyers (McDonald, 1999, p.B3). Vargas’ point was that the individual graywater recycling systems was a favorable alternative to the hundreds of millions of dollars expended on large-scale reclamation projects.

At the City Council meeting, however, Donna Morafcik, spokesperson for the

Building Industry Association, opposed the pilot, which Vargas had admitted would be the first step towards making the graywater recycling systems a requirement for all new homes, which would in turn increase the cost of a new home to the buyer. Ed Kimura, a representative for the Sierra Club, warned committee against using exaggerated statistics to overstate the benefits of graywater systems. Kimura also noted that there would be areas in San Diego where the graywater systems could not be used because of too much clay or sand in the soil. Council member Harry Mathis, who voted against the “shower to flowers” pilot when it was first proposed in committee, argued that government

“shouldn’t pay people to install recycling systems that are designed to reduce water bills”

(Huard, Dec. 1, 1999, p.B3). He also expressed concern that the “businesses that sell those systems would benefit,” referring specifically to ReWater, which was the only supplier of these systems mentioned in the council minutes (City of San Diego, 1999).

However, Council member, Judy McCarty, who supported the graywater recycling pilot, noted that the city already had programs for businesses that use recycled water, and that

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“there is nothing different with this concept other than it is single-family homes instead

of big businesses” (Huard, Dec. 1, 1999, p.B3).

With opposition from the Building Industry Association, Vargas’ proposal for a

$3,800 per unit subsidy was not approved the City Council. However, the San Diego

County Water Authority did initiate a Graywater Incentive Pilot Program, which offered a $260 reduction for water and sewer connection fee, and the City Council agreed to provide in-kind services in support of the pilot, “such as meter reading and providing usage data, estimated at $18,200 in staff time” (City of San Diego, 1999). But because developers were reluctant to pass the costs of the systems to their customers and did therefore not want graywater systems to become mandatory for future developments, the pilot program never filled it quota of 1,000 homes approved for fee reduction; by March

2008, San Diego County had since issued only 53 permits for graywater recycling systems (Davis, 2008).

Epoch 4: 2000 to 2011.

Repurification Still on the Sierra Club’s Agenda.

Shortly after the Water Repurification Project was cancelled, some of the policy actors who had been center stage as the drama unfolded were replaced by new cast members. In October 2000, the city’s wastewater chief, David Schlesinger announced his retirement. In an article covering the event, Schlesinger, who had long supported the reservoir augmentation concept, stated “it’s time for some ‘new blood’ to take over,” and later in the article he accepts responsibility for the failure of the repurification project:

Perhaps Schlesinger’s most notable flop was his “toilet-to-tap” proposal to treat human sewage to a high degree, then pump it into a reservoir used for drinking

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water. The idea arose as a way for the city to meet its goal to reuse half of the sewage treated at the North City water reclamation plant by 2010. “I deserve the credit for the failure of that one,” he said. (Rodgers, 2000, p.B1)

And as 2000 was an election year, some of the local politicians who opposed reservoir augmentation left or changed office. In December, Susan Golding was succeeded by

Dick Murphy as mayor. City council member Juan Vargas, who opposed the repurification project, was elected to the state assembly. For a short time, among those concerned with water issues, attention had diverted away from the reservoir augmentation concept to other reclamation, conservation and water development strategies.

Indirect potable reuse returns to the media agenda in September 2001, with an opposite the editorial page column published in the Union-Tribune, written by Robert

Simmons, who represented the Sierra Club as an intervenor in the U.S. EPA’s lawsuit against the city. In the article, “Our Region Needs Repurified Water,” Simmons calls on city officials “to demonstrate their greater courage by reactivating the ‘Repurified Water

Project’ so it can fulfill its bright promise” (p.B9). His argument for doing this is framed in terms of water supply security and independence to hedge against periods of drought and external water fights. However, his policy position when he represented the Sierra

Club was to maximize reclamation and beneficial reuse. Indirect potable reuse was not in itself a policy goal, but a policy alternative to an extended distribution pipeline for nonpotable reuse. It was considered the only cost-feasible means of maximizing reclamation, as Simmons wrote:

Even if an expensive pipeline system was to be built to take the maximum volume of the North City plant’s reclaimed water to irrigation customers, no more than one-third of the plant’s capacity could be used for this purpose due to the limited markets. (Simmons, 2001, p.B9)

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Opponents of the repurification program contended that the same level of security and independence could be achieved through other strategies that, as one water district official put it, “saves drinking water for drinking” (Gardner, 2002, p.A1). These included water recycling for nonpotable uses, such as irrigation, industrial process water, and toilet flushing using a dual pipe system. For supporters of the indirect potable reuse concept, these were seen as incremental steps towards the realization of indirect potable reuse as a policy goal. As California assembly member, Jackie Goldberg, was quoted saying in a later published article on reclamation: “Toilet to tap is going to come. It won’t come in leaps. It will come in steps. First it’s toilet-to-toilet” (Gardner, 2002, p.A1).

BayKeeper v. City of San Diego.

In October 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Beaches Environmental

Assessment and Coastal Health Act (Beach Act), which amended the Clean Water Act by mandating water quality standards and the monitoring of pathogens at beaches and other coastal recreation areas. There was already a provision in the Clean Water Act, Section

505, which authorizes individual citizens to file suit against any violator of the Clean

Water Act’s requirements. Approximately two weeks following the passage of the Beach

Act, the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation and San Diego BayKeeper

(which has since been renamed, San Diego Coastkeeper), sent the city of San Diego a 60- day notice of intent to sue letter. The two organizations, which share the values of preserving the beach and waters, alleged that city officials, through intentional conduct and neglect, had illegally discharged more than 37 million gallons of raw sewage and failed to develop a program to deal with chronic sewer spills caused by excess storm

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water and urban runoff (San Diego BayKeeper, 2000). According to the attorney and

chair of the Surfrider Foundation, Marco Gonzalez,

In the ongoing litigation between the city and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the city is going to great lengths to show that our multitude of beach closures and constant ocean pollution are not because of sewage discharges from the Point Loma Ocean Outfall, but rather from difficult to discern non-point source and urban runoff. With this lawsuit, we will show that the city is responsible for those problems as well. (San Diego BayKeeper, 2000, p.5)

This added a new dimension to the city of San Diego’s ocean pollution abatement

program. Under the partial consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency, the city had agreed to upgrade its sewer system, but its near-term focus was the

outfall extension at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, and construction of the

North City Water Reclamation Plant. In March 2001, San Diego BayKeeper and the San

Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation filed the civil action against the city. In

response, in May 2001, Mayor Murphy and the City Council created a Clean Water Task

Force to identify ways to reduce sewage overflows, and passed a 7.5% per year sewage

service rate increase for 2002-2005, with a portion of the increase budgeted towards

needed sewage pipe upgrades and repairs (Resolution R-295587).

New Water Reuse Study.

From January 2003 to January 2004, the San Diego BayKeeper and the Surfrider foundation met with the city regularly over a one year period and worked out a settlement agreement that included, on the city’s part, a year-long Water Reuse study on various uses of reclaimed wastewater, including reservoir augmentation (Balint, Nov. 20, 2003;

City of San Diego Water Department, 2007). According to the Surfrider Foundation:

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The environmental groups primarily sought to resurrect a previously failed Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) project which would result in highly treated sewage being combined with San Diego’s raw water from the Colorado River or San Francisco Bay Delta. Sometimes called “toilet to tap,” the environmental groups nonetheless sought to re-initiate discussion among community leaders and citizens about the benefits of such a local source of water. (n.d.)

In November 2003, The San Diego Union-Tribune printed an article, “A Drop in the

Bucket City Program Turns Sewage into Usable Water but has Few Customers,” which essentially described the city’s reclamation program as an expensive and unfulfilled policy objective:

Water reclamation is a popular concept. But in practice, few potential customers want it and fewer still can afford to install the purple pipes needed to carry it. So far, San Diego has spent nearly $500 million on the citywide water reclamation program. It sells a gallon of reclaimed water from the North City plant for less than it costs to produce it. Even so, the plant is outperforming a sister plant in the South Bay that has been open for almost two years without reclaiming a single gallon. (Balint, Nov. 15, 2003)

The article reported that the Sierra Club, which negotiated reclamation as part of the city’s consent decree from its lawsuit with the U.S. EPA, joined with the Surfrider

Foundation and San Diego BayKeeper in asking the City Council to study how to increase the use of reclaimed water; “in part, they want the city to revive a defunct proposal to add reclaimed water to a reservoir and eventually use it for drinking, nicknamed the toilet-to-tap plan” (Balint, Nov. 15, 2003).

The following week, the Union-Tribune ran an article covering the negotiations in progress, “City Panel OKs Reclaimed Water Study, Action Could Help Resolve Lawsuit”

(Balint, Nov. 20, 2003). It describes opposition to the city spending more money to studying the reservoir augmentation proposal from former state Assembly member,

Howard Wayne, and former City Council member, Bruce Henderson: “Both fear that

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drinking reclaimed sewage water would pose health risks even if it underwent several

treatments to remove pathogens” (Balint, Nov. 20, 2003, p.B3). The City Council’s

Natural Resources and Culture Committee unanimously recommended commissioning

the study.

Council member, Donna Frye, specifically asked that “the study examine potential health risks, particularly those that might be posed by antibiotics, estrogen and other pharmaceuticals in the water” (Balint, Nov. 20, 2003, p.B3). These were health risks that were not initially part of the part of the debate. The Health Effects Study conducted by the Western Consortium for Public Health had reported favorably on the capability of advanced wastewater treatment technology to reliably remove various toxic metals and organics, including viruses and bacteria (Thompson et al., 1992). But, as the

National Research Council (1998) reported:

Wastewater often contains a potentially large number of chemicals and other environmental agents suspected of affecting human and animal endocrine systems…this issue has not been examined…understanding and reducing the associated risk from mixtures of organic chemicals should be a key goal for future research.

This added a new evaluative dimension to the health risk debate. These concerns extended the discussion from toxic metals, fecal coliform bacteria, and viruses to health risks from endocrine disruptors. David Schubert, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the Salk

Institute for Biological Sciences, was one of the outspoken expert critics of the repurification project who raised this concern (Balint, Oct. 18, 1998). Schubert noted that there are thousands of neurotoxic compounds, legally disposed in wastewater by the medical research community, biotech companies, and hospitals, that may have a

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cumulative, long-term health effect and that “the city doesn’t have any way of measuring

these easily” (Balint, Oct. 18, 1998).

A similar frame was later highlighted, in early January 2004, when the San Diego

Union-Tribune printed an article, “Interest Renewed in Water Recycling, Chemicals at

Issue in Toilet-to-Tap Revival” (Balint, 2004). The article states that “one of the key issues will be whether the treatment can remove chemicals such as those contained in birth control pills and antibiotics” (p.B1). By this time, the media had nicknamed endocrine disruptors, “gender benders,” after studies found chemical compounds wastewater that simulated estrogen: “male fish exposed to these kinds of chemicals have taken on female characteristics” (“Toilet-to-Tap Water Recycling Idea Resurfaces in San

Diego,” 2004, p.10).

Proponents of indirect potable reuse, which is at this time widely referred to as

“reservoir augmentation,” include the Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, San Diego

BayKeeper, Audubon Society and Environmental Health Coalition, which together form an advocacy coalition called the Bay Council. Their goal underlying their policy position is for the city “to make better use of its reclaimed water before dumping it into the ocean”

(Balint, 2004, p.B1). Other advocates for the reservoir augmentation concept include the

WateReuse Foundation, which sponsored studies on removal of endocrine disruptors using reverse osmosis, and claims the chemicals can be removed (p.B1). The opposition to renewed study of the reservoir augmentation concept is represented by former City

Council member, Bruce Henderson; former state Assembly member, Howard Wayne; the

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Revolting Grandmas; and water quality expert, Daniel Okun, whose sentiment is

reported:

There are close to 100,000 potential contaminants of water. Many are undetectable with current testing and there have been no studies to determine their health effects…. To use toilet water for drinking just doesn’t make any sense. Why take the risk? There’s no point in exposing the populace to the risk of an accident, equipment failure or human error. (Balint, Jan. 4, 2004, p.B1)

The Bay Council’s response to the contaminants argument is expressed by Robert

Simmons, who is both an attorney for the Sierra Club and the spokesperson for the Bay

Council. Simmons noted that these contaminants would already be in the water because

“more than 200 municipalities, including Las Vegas, discharge their sewage into the

Colorado River, which supplies drinking water to San Diego” (Balint, Jan. 4, 2004,

p.B1). The counter argument from reservoir augmentation opponents was that the effluent discharged into the Colorado River is highly diluted and the chemical

compounds break down by natural processes (Balint, Jan. 4, 2004).

The following week, the Union-Tribune published an editorial, “Another Study?

Reclaimed Water is not a Feasible Alternative” (Jan. 13, 2004), which criticized the

proposed $900,000 study “a very expensive sop to environmental groups…that would

trod already-covered ground” (p.B6). Specifically, the editorial referred to the

component that involved revisiting the indirect potable reuse concept, which was now

called “reservoir augmentation” by its supporters. The editorial speaks to the “righteous”

beliefs of the environmentalists, which overshadow their practicality in that reclamation

was more expensive that other freshwater options. Seawater desalination would be

cheaper. The underlying problem was that, as part of its consent decree with the U.S.

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EPA, the city of San Diego had spent a total of nearly $500 million on its reclamation

program, and there was not much of a market for the nonpotable reclaimed water. About

85% of the 25 million gallons of water treated per day at the North City Reclamation

Plant was being discharged into the ocean, and the South Bay Reclamation Plant which

had been completed was then not yet operational (“Another Study? Reclaimed Water is not a Feasible Alternative,” 2004).

The editorial’s arguments, that reclamation was not necessary to protect the marine environment, nor was it cost-effective as a water-supply option, speak to the ideals of maximum beneficial reuse held by the Sierra Club, and the policy goal of the

Surfrider Foundation and San Diego BayKeeper, which was to use reservoir augmentation as a means of reducing ocean pollution. To the Sierra Club, discharging reclaimed water into the ocean was wasteful and didn’t fit their “maximum beneficial reuse” frame. For BayKeeper and the Surfrider Foundation, the policy goal for reservoir augmentation was to get the City to “stop using the Pacific Ocean as a dumping ground for sewage,” a stated by Marco Gonzales, the attorney for the two groups (Lee, 2005).

On the same day the editorial ran in the Union-Tribune, the City Council approved $900,000 for a one-year reuse study by a 7-2 vote (Resolution R-298781). The study was to be an evaluation of all aspects of an increased water reuse program, and included a compilation of “research/studies concerning reservoir augmentation, and information concerning potential impacts of pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, and additional constituents of the wastewater stream on water quality and health” (City of San

Diego, 2004, p.52). Mayor Murphy (at this time, the city of San Diego still had a

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council-manager form of government) and Council member, Brian Maienschein, cast

dissenting votes over reservoir augmentation, which was “the most controversial element

of the study,” (Balint, Jan. 14, 2004, p.B1). The Mayor argued that “the city should devote its resources to increasing the use of reclaimed water for irrigation and other nonpotable uses” (p.B1).

A portion of the study’s funding was to be allocated to an outreach and education program for public awareness and acceptance (Balint, Jan. 14, 2004). This was needed to

overcome “the appearance the city was more concerned about costs than public health and the perception that the wealthy would be discharging their wastes and the poorer communities would be drinking them” (Balint, Jan. 14, 2004, p.B1). The outreach component included a public opinion telephone survey directed by the County Water

Authority, as part of its strategy in collaboration with the city Water Department to

“methodically and scientifically” plan an extensive public acceptance program “to try to convince people of the benefits of recycled water” (Jiménez, 2004, p.B1).

The results of the opinion survey, prepared by Rea & Parker Research, were reported in the Union-Tribune in August 2004. As suggested by the headline, “Few

Thirst for Recycled Tap Water, Survey Says” (Jiménez, 2004), most of those surveyed opposed the reservoir augmentation concept. The article reports high approval ratings

(70% to 90%) for most nonpotable reuse applications, but that 63% opposed using the reclaimed water for reservoir augmentation (Jiménez, 2004, p.B1). These findings suggested a correlation where “the closer it actually gets to you, the less palatable it is”

(Jiménez, 2004, p.B1).

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The article covering the survey results employs two notable framing devices, one-

sided reporting and categorization, which somewhat obfuscate an interpretation of the

findings reported by the principal investigators, Rea & Parker Research. In the article,

Jiménez (2004) writes, “Forget about drinking it. Even with additional treatment, 63%

oppose using it for potable, or drinkable, water” (p.B1). This implies perhaps that 37%

supported the reservoir augmentation concept. Not so. The actual report to the San

Diego County Water Authority reads:

When provided with additional treatment and mixed with other drinking water sources, recycled water used to supplement drinking water is favored by only 28% (12% strongly), but opposed by 63% (45% strongly), with 10% again uncertain. (Rea & Parker Research, 2004, p.27)

By reporting only the proportion opposed to the reservoir augmentation concept Jiménez

(2004) implies an inflated public approval from the 10% with a “don’t know” response.

The opposite occurs in a subsequently published article that reports “only 28% of them supported the concept” (Lee, July 12, 2005, p.A1), which implies 72% opposed reservoir augmentation and blurs the fact that 10% were uncertain.

In both articles (Jiménez, 2004; Lee, 2005) the “strongly” favor/oppose and

“somewhat” favor/oppose categories are combined and reported as “28% favor” or “63% oppose” for simplification. However, doing do omits the research finding that “the opposition ratio of approximately 2:1 is an even more dramatic 4:1 when examining only strong inclinations in favor or opposed” (Rea & Parker, 2004, p.27). Another example of framing through categorization is found in Jiménez (2004) who reports: “Of the opponents, 34 percent either don’t trust or feel uncomfortable with the process. That’s followed by 17 percent who are concerned it will affect their health. Seventeen percent

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said they don’t have enough information” (p.B1). The preferred reading seems to be that distrust or discomfort was main reason respondents opposed the indirect potable reuse concept. These were two separate categories in the Rea & Parker (2004) report, with

16% “uncomfortable with the concept,” and 18% who “do not trust the process” (Rea &

Parker, 2004, Chart 13). If the proportion concerned about health and safety (i.e., 17%) were to include those concerned about biological and chemical contaminants (14%), and those concerned with cleanliness (11%), then health and safety, at 42%, would be of most

concern (see Rea & Parker, 2004, Chart 13).

The article first reporting the survey findings (Jiménez, 2004) also includes a

warning about the potential risks associated with “potential errors,” articulated by Dave

Schubert, a biochemist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Schubert noted that dual piping presents the risk of having recycled water pipes mistakenly connected to potable water pipes, which happened in 1999 when a “plumbing mix-up” at a city park sent recycled wastewater treated to the level required for landscape irrigation to a drinking fountain (Harpster, 1999, p.B1). Another potential error cited by Schubert was with regard to the amount of chlorine used for disinfection: “Many times, water agencies add too much chlorine, which can cause pipes to corrode and irritate the stomach if ingested. On other occasions, not enough chlorine is used, which allows bacteria to live and could cause disease” (Jiménez, 2004, p.B1). As these are weak arguments that are only obliquely germane to the proposed reservoir augmentation concept, they read as if they could be a straw-man set up for easy refutation. The following week, in response to that article, the San Diego Union-Tribune printed a letter to the editor from Marsi Steirer,

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director of the Water Reuse Study and deputy director for the city’s Water Department,

explaining that they were “pleased that the public expressed strong support for the use of

recycled water in many settings,” and that the arguments made Schubert concerning

“disinfection levels and the safety of recycled water in proximity to humans have no

correlation to the city’s current recycled water system” (Steirer, 2004, p.B9). This letter

to the editor provides Steirer a platform to explain the reservoir augmentation progress,

and that the “toilet-to-tap” label a “misnomer; it is misleading, inaccurate and inhibits

thoughtful public dialogue on water recycling options” (p.B9).

Citizen Advisory Panel Recommendation.

The Water Reuse Study included an “independent scientific advisory panel,”

George Tchobanoglous, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering for the

University of California Davis, and a citizen advisory panel of 30 San Diego residents, which included representatives of various ethnicities from business groups (e.g., the

Asian Business Association, and San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce), and local environmentalist organizations (e.g., the San Diego Audubon Society, San Diego

BayKeeper, the Surfrider Foundation, and Sierra Club) (Lee, 2005). In July 2005, the citizen panel met to discuss six water reuse scenarios identified by the scientific panel, reportedly to meet the region’s water supply needs (as opposed to reducing ocean pollution). Four involved indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation. The other two involved “additional water purchases and using recycled water only for irrigation and industry” (Lee, July 12, 2005, p.A1). The 30-member citizen advisory panel unanimously supported the reservoir augmentation concept as the best way to maximize

196 the beneficial reuse of reclaimed wastewater from the North City Reclamation Plant, although it was also one of the most expensive of the strategies investigated in the study

(Lee, July 15, 2005). The citizen panel, aware that adverse public opinion would be a barrier towards implementation, included in their report to the City Council an outline communication strategy that involved schools and “engaging well-known local leaders as spokespersons” (Lee, July 15, 2005, p.A1).

Association of Concerned Taxpayers v. City of San Diego.

In November 2005, the Association of Concerned Taxpayers filed a lawsuit against the city of San Diego seeking to halt the Water Reuse Study, claiming the city’s

Water Department was running a “stealth program to move the [reservoir augmentation] concept forward again despite potential health and cost concerns” (Stetz, 2005, p.B1).

Supposedly, the project had been cancelled in 1999, and its budget eliminated. The taxpayer group “asserted that the mere study of recycling wastewater was unlawful”

(Aguirre, 2006, p.17). In a letter to the editor of The San Diego Union-Tribune, Marsi

Steirer, director of the Water Reuse Study, explained that the reservoir augmentation concept was one of six strategies being considered, and denied any “secret plans to reactivate the water purification project of the 1990s” (Steirer, 2005, p.B9). Quite the contrary, she explained that the water reuse study had a website, a speaker’s bureau, and a stakeholder group, the City of San Diego Assembly on Water Reuse. There were media releases, three front-page Union-Tribune articles on the study, and an educational video broadcast on the city’s television channel (Steirer, 2005, p.B9). The city filed a motion to dismiss the case, explaining that the issue was “within the exclusive purview of the City

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Council,” and the taxpayer group abandoned their case (Aguirre, 2006, p.17). The

significance of this opposition is that it represents the same “libertarian” frame of mind

towards water reuse that was exemplified by Bruce Henderson when he opposed the

project during his term as a City Council member. In fact, Bruce Henderson was the

chair and president of the Association of Concerned Taxpayers, and had fought the city

through legal suits on other issues, including public subsidies intended to keep the

Chargers football team in San Diego (Perry, 1997).

2005 “Strong Mayor” Election

At this time, the reservoir augmentation concept became a campaign issue for the

2005 mayoral election. This election marks the shift in the city of San Diego’s form of government from a council-manager to mayor-council. In the 2004 municipal election, citizens had voted “yes” on Proposition F, which empowered the Mayor, beginning

January 2006, with budgeting and executive authority over city personnel, and separated the executive powers of the Mayor from the legislative powers of the City Council. A consequence of this transition was that an elected mayor now had executive control over the city of San Diego’s water reuse program, whereas prior to this time work-a-day operations were the responsibility of a city manager who was hired by and accountable to the City Council.

One of the mayoral candidates, Police Chief Jerry Sanders, opposed the reservoir augmentation proposal, and he wryly thanked former City Council member, George

Stevens, for popularizing its moniker: “I’d like to thank George Stevens for coining that phrase when it first went through. It’s not sellable. We can continue purifying water and

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nobody’s going to want to drink it when it says ‘toilet-to-tap’” (Marelius, 2005, p.B2).

Sanders debated the issue with candidate and council member, Donna Frye, who argued

on behalf of the proposal: “Simply because you give it a funny name doesn’t mean there

isn’t good science behind it…I think people need to understand the science behind looking at using water and any source of water, because we’re living in a desert and we’re fast running out of it” (Marelius, 2005, p.B2). To this Sanders offered a sarcastic response: “Maybe we could bottle that and sell it all over the country as some kind of gimmick…People will buy anything in a bottle if you put a high-enough price on it”

(Marelius, 2005, p.B2). Sanders might be guilty of depreciating the policy discourse, but he absolutely trounced Frye in the election and became the city of San Diego’s first

“strong mayor” (Hall, 2005).

Both Sanders and Frye represent frames in terms of archetypical structured representations. Sanders was seen as the stereotypical “moderate Republican white male more likely to favor limited change,” who received support from the Republican Party and business interests (LaVelle, 2005). In contrast, Frye was the liberal environmentalist, a “beach-culture icon who runs a surfboard business with her husband, famous surfer

Skip Frye” (LaVelle, 2005). At the time, which was still recently post-911, there was a more conservative political climate, with George W. Bush serving as President, and

Arnold Schwarzenegger as California’s governor, which led to Sanders’ election.

Sanders Opposes Reservoir Augmentation

Sanders had made his position against the reservoir augmentation concept part of his political platform during his mayoral campaign. In July 2006, before the City

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Council’s Natural Resources and Culture Committee had voted on whether to adopt the

strategies identified in the Water Reuse Study, he again publicly announced his

opposition to the proposal, and called such projects “expensive and unnecessary, given

the city’s other options for increasing its water supply, [such as] desalination and buying more water outside the region” (Lee, July 20, 2006, p.A1). Council member Donna Frye,

who ran against Sanders for mayor, argued “the city needs water; we have to look at all

the options” (Lee, July 20, 2006, p.A1). This frame was echoed by the San Diego

Regional Chamber of Commerce, who wrote in a letter to the City Council: “We all need

to work together to make water reuse a new alternative to augment our water supply”

(Lee, July 20, 2006, p.A1). However, the basis for the reservoir augmentation project was

not to increase the water supply, but in the lawsuit settlement with San Diego

Coastkeeper (formerly BayKeeper) and the Surfrider Foundation to reduce ocean

pollution. The “drought-proof” local water supply and proximal and distal economic benefits of such a project sought by industry groups, including “the boost in San Diego’s reputation as a water supply innovator” (Lee, July 20, 2006, p.A1), and the Sierra Club’s

conservationist ideal of maximizing beneficial reuse were complementary to this goal.

The Union-Tribune, however, sided with Mayor Sanders and published an editorial, “Yuck! San Diego should flush “toilet-to-tap” plan” (July 24, 2006). The editorial describes the proposal as a $238 million “boondoggle,” courtesy of “zealots” and “Water Department bureaucrats,” and reflects on its new name, “reservoir augmentation,” as “a euphemism intended to obscure the nasty fact that the project would take heavily contaminated sewage water, purify it and send it through your tap for human

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consumption” (p.B6). The editorial cites alternative water supply options, such as lining

the All-American Canal and other conservation measures that in aggregate will provide

enough water for 1.6 million San Diegans (i.e., 200,000 acre-feet per year) at one-third

the cost of the reservoir augmentation proposal. The editorial argues that seawater

desalination would also be a much less expensive option, and that the reclaimed

wastewater should be used for irrigation and industrial applications. The editorial

concludes by citing the 1998 National Research Council report that stated indirect potable reuse should be “an option of last resort because of the many uncertainties associated with assessing the potential health risks of drinking reclaimed water” (p.B6). Although the editorial makes many the same arguments regarding costs and health risks that opponents of the proposal had been making since the Water Repurification Project was proposed in the early 1990s, by framing the issue in terms of water supply it misses the point that the policy goal, as driven by the lawsuit settlement, was to use reservoir augmentation as the most cost-feasible solution to reducing ocean discharges and maximizing beneficial reuse.

The water supply frame of the editorial seemingly set the parameters for a mediatized debate that ensued over the following weeks in letters to the editor, news articles, and feature columns. Those supporting the indirect potable reuse concept, which included business groups and environmentalists, trusted the science behind the reclamation and treatment processes and sought the benefit of “a clean, steady, local supply” (Lee, July 27, 2006). They also argued that the water imported from the

Colorado River already contained wastewater discharges from Lake Mead (Hemmingson,

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2006; Hight, 2006; Reznik, 2006; G. Schmidt, 2006), and that seawater desalination is a

costly alternative that creates its own set of problems, such as harming the marine

environment and spurring population growth (Jenkins, 2006; Reznik, 2006). Those who

opposed the idea, which included 63% of the public, were primarily concerned about

health risks (Rea & Parker Research, 2004), though the criticism from Mayor Sanders

and the San Diego Union-Tribune was principally with regard to costs, which were then

estimated at $238 million to produce 21.2 million gallons of reclaimed water per day

treated to where it would be discharged to the reservoir (Lee, July 27, 2006). While this

was considerably more expensive than other supply options, it was one of the more

economic proposals for reclamation for the purpose of ocean pollution abatement.

Comparably, expansion of the infrastructure for non-potable reuse was estimated to cost

$285 million to recycling up to 17.6 million gallons per day (Lee, July 27, 2006).

Despite support from environmentalists and business interests, Mayor Sanders

held his conservative position against the reservoir augmentation concept (Lee, August 4,

2006). Instead, Sanders sought to comply with California and U.S. EPA water discharge

mandates through improvements to the Metropolitan Sewage System, which he proposed

to fund through a 35% increase in water and sewer rates (“Rate hike caveats,” 2006).

This policy position was supported by the Union-Tribune editorial board, but with the

condition that Sanders and the City Council remove two “boondoggles” from the table:

the reservoir augmentation project, and the recently proposed conversion of the Point

Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant to meet the U.S. EPA requirement for secondary-level wastewater treatment (“Rate hike caveats,” 2006). Sanders’ budget did not include

202 either, but a proposal to upgrade the Point Loma facility, which was estimated to cost $1 billion, was sponsored by City Council member, Jim Madaffer, ostensibly to better protect the marine environment, though an editorial printed in the Union-Tribune suggested “the only rationale for relinquishing the waiver is political, not environmental”

(“Renew the waiver,” 2006).

Reclaimed Water Mix-Up

In June 2007, the city of San Diego entered into an agreement with the Otay

Water District to sell about 6 million gallons per day reclaimed, partially treated water from its North City Reclamation Plant, and the smaller and the newly operational South

Bay Reclamation Plant (Lee, June 1, 2007). The water was treated to the level appropriate for irrigation of landscape, golf courses, and parks. The Otay Water District had already been using reclaimed water for these purposes, but for business areas and industrial parks it had previously blended one part reclaimed water with four parts potable water. Shortly after the switch was made to 100% reclaimed water, occupants at

Fenton Business Center in Eastlake started to complain about the quality of their drinking water: “It tasted bad, smelled funny and had a yellowish tint” (Krueger, 2007, p.A1).

When the business park opened in 2005, three of the buildings were mistakenly connected to the purple pipes carrying the reclaimed water for irrigation. The occupants didn’t notice because of the potable and reclaimed water blend where only 20% of the water flowing through the pipes was reclaimed. When the Otay Water District made the switch to 100% reclaimed water, “merchants noticed the funky small, look and taste”

(Krueger, 2007, p.A1). Two food preparation businesses, the Candy Bouquet and Dream

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Dinners, were closed by the state Department of Public Health, and were unable to

recover afterwards (Sierra, 2007). The owners of the Candy Bouquet have since been

awarded $1.1 million in damages, and the other tenants have also filed lawsuits, which

are still pending (“Jury Sides with Business Owners in Tainted Water Case,” 2011). One significant aspect of this event is that it provided debate ammunition for reservoir augmentation opponents. An editorial commenting on the incident noted it “makes an even stronger argument against the city of San Diego’s proposed ‘toilet-to-tap’ program to try to turn sewage water into drinking water” (“Water Foul: Warning from Otay,”

2007, p.B10).

City Council Overrides Mayor’s Veto

In September 2007, water officials announced that a multiyear water shortage was expected for the San Diego region after U.S. District Court judge Oliver Wanger issued a ruling that would reduce the transfer of waters from Northern California in an effort to protect the smelt of the Sacramental Delta (Lee, Sept. 5, 2007). The small fish were now endangered due to the pumps that had reduced water levels, and this environmental degradation was the very same issue that had generated interest in the Peripheral Canal to bypass the Delta, which 25 years earlier had been vetoed by state referendum. The water shortage over the delta smelt decision renewed the debate over the reservoir augmentation as a water supply issue that had to be dealt with through combination of conservation and supply augmentation strategies. At this time, the San Diego County

Water Authority and City of San Diego Water Department discussed “raising prices as demand rises, limiting deliveries, promoting water-saving devices, setting specific days

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for watering and asking for voluntary cutbacks” to promote conservation and proposed

“seawater desalination, buying water from farmers for urban use, lining canals to limit seepage, recycling wastewater and building reservoirs” to increase the water supply (Lee,

Sept. 5, 2007, p.B1).

City Attorney Mike Aguirre, who supported the reservoir augmentation proposal,

saw this as a window of opportunity to reinstate the issue on the public’s agenda. At a

press conference Aguirre explained that “he favored toilet-to-tap and would be willing to, in effect, force it on the community even if they didn’t want it, through negotiations with

EPA associated with the Point Loma Wastewater treatment facility and permit applications” (Reed, 2007). Mayor Sander, in response, “criticized Aguirre for trying to

establish a link between water reuse and the Environmental Protection Agency’s concerns over the city’s sewage treatment, saying three times that the problems cannot be solved together” (Vigil, 2007, p.B1). Sanders’ objections to the project were based on its costs, which if combined with upgrading the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant to secondary-level treatment would cost the city of San Diego $4.5 billion to implement

(Vigil, 2007). Aguirre didn’t dispute the high costs, but instead argued that it would be a

long-term investment, and he threatened to “refuse to allow officials to sign off on large developments that require guarantees that water will be available for 20 years” (Vigil,

2007, p.B1).

The Union-Tribune sided with Sanders. The lead of its editorial, “Perrier it isn’t.

Aguirre toilet-to-tap plan doubles sewage bills” (2007, p.B8), posed the question,

“Should San Diegans pay a staggering $4.5 billion for the privilege of drinking treated

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sewage water from their faucets?” The editorial explained that the cost of implementing reservoir augmentation would double the typical water and sewage bill, to an estimated

$1,929 per year, and it highlighted that the city already reclaimed thousands of acre-feet of irrigation water that it discharged in the ocean because there was no market for it, even at subsidized rates. Additionally, the editorial argues against the project because of the health risks of indirect potable reuse, and closes an argument for nonpotable reuse:

“Before we stoop to drinking our own sewage water, a prospect that raises a variety of health concerns, we should first use all the recycled irrigation water that we already produce at a much lower cost” (p.B9).

In response to the editorial, area residents sent letters to the editor. Bruce Reznik,

executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper, wrote an opposite the editorial page

column, “Addressing San Diego’s Water Woes” (2007), in which he argued that San

Diego was at the cusp of a “perfect storm” for a water supply shortage due to the drought that lowered Colorado River water levels and the court ruling to protect the delta smelt, which reduced water transfers from Northern California. Reznik favored the indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation concept over desalination because of desalination had higher energy requirements and would offshore marine ecosystems. He

contended that “reservoir recharge” was the most cost-feasible water supply alternative,

and noted that City Attorney Aguirre, the City Council President Scott Peters, and City

Council members Madaffer and Frye also supported “taking wastewater that would be

discharged into the ocean through the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Facility, and

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treating it to drinking water standards before using it to recharge our local reservoirs”

(Reznik, 2007, p.B5).

On October 29, 2007, the City Council’s Natural Resources and Culture

Committee reviewed the Water Reuse Study and heard testimony from various

stakeholders (City of San Diego, Oct. 29, 2007). The Water Reuse Study was presented by Marsi Steirer, the deputy director of the city’s Water Department, who recommended indirect potable reuse via advanced treatment and augmentation of the San Vicente

Reservoir, referred to as the “North City 3” (NC-3) strategy, as the best option identified in the study with regard to maximizing reclamation plant capacity and beneficial reuse

(City of San Diego, 2007). Council members Frye and Madaffer called for a one-year reservoir augmentation demonstration project, to be initiated July 1, 2008, to meet

California’s Department of Public Health certification requirements, which at that time had not yet been determined.

Testimony in support of the indirect potable reuse concept was presented by representatives from the Water Reuse Study’s citizen advisory board, which was also called the American Assembly, the Sierra Club, the Citizen’s Coordinate for Century 3, the Surfrider Foundation, and San Diego Coastkeeper. The arguments supporting the project centered on the need to develop locally controlled water supplies in the face of reduced allocations of imported water from the Metropolitan Water District. Marco

Gonzalez and Bruce Reznik, who respectively represented the Surfrider Foundation and

San Diego Coastkeeper, emphasized indirect potable reuse would have lower energy requirements and less adverse environmental impact compared to seawater desalination.

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They also asked the City Council to consider mandatory conservation measures as part of

San Diego’s strategy for sustainable development. A representative from the Otay Water

District expressed concern that the reservoir augmentation project would increase the wholesale cost of the irrigation water it was purchasing from the South Bay Reclamation

Plant. The Otay Water District had invested $43 million in its nonpotable reclaimed water distribution system, and argued that the use of reclaimed water for irrigation offset the demand for potable water. The San Diego County Taxpayer’s Association supported the concept of developing a reliable and locally controlled water supply as an “economic lifeline” for the city, but called for an updated independent fiscal analysis to compare the costs of indirect potable reuse and seawater desalination, and include in that analysis any grants, rebates and incentives offered by the federal government, State of California, or

Metropolitan Water District. Council member Toni Atkins supported the idea of an indirect potable reuse demonstration project but expressed concern that not enough was being done to promote public awareness in her district, and that an outreach program for

District 3 would be needed in order for her to support implementation of the indirect potable reuse project.

Objection to the reservoir augmentation project from Mayor Sanders was vocalized through Jim Barrett, the public utilities director. According to Barrett, the reservoir augmentation proposal, if implemented, would provide for only 5% of San

Diego’s regional water supply and treating the reclaimed water to drinking water standards would cost triple the price of imported water (City of San Diego, Oct. 29,

2007). Instead, Barrett concurred with the Mayor’s support for the Water Reuse Study’s

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“North City 1” (NC-1) strategy, which was to expand the purple pipe network for

increased nonpotable reuse, without treating the effluent to drinking water standards and

taking it to a reservoir. Council members Tony Young and Kevin Faulconer did not

speak at the meeting, but opposed the “NC-3” strategy and had previously expressed

concern over costs (Lee, July 27, 2006). Council member Brian Maienschein was absent

from the meeting, but also opposed the project. Along with former Mayor Dick Murphy,

Maienschein had earlier cast a dissenting vote against initiating the Water Reuse Study to

settle the city’s lawsuit with San Diego BayKeeper and the Surfrider Foundation (Balint,

Jan. 14, 204).

With Maienschein excused, the City Council voted 5-2 to initiate a one-year

indirect potable reuse demonstration project, to begin July 1, 2008. The motion also

directed the Mayor to conduct and “Independent Energy and Economic Analysis” of the

water supply augmentation methods in the Long Range Water Resources Plan, and

expand the “community education and outreach” program, with priority given to

communities that had not previously received presentations (City of San Diego, Oct. 29,

2007, p.22).

The next day, the Union-Tribune ran an editorial, “A monstrous waste” (2007), that quantified the amount of reclaimed water the City was dumping into the Pacific because there were no buyers for it, and detailed the costs involved with the “toilet to tap boondoggle” (p.B8). That Sunday, however, columnist Gerry Braun highlighted the point made by Bruce Reznik of San Diego Coastkeeper and City Council member Jim

Madaffer that the imported water from the Colorado River already contained sewage

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discharges from upstream locations, and that the recycled water would actually be cleaner

than San Diego tap water and even some bottle water (2007, p.B1). The following week, the debate over reservoir augmentation continued through the Union-Tribune through

letters to the editor. Under the heading “Flushing Away Toilet-to-Tap Fears” (Nov. 10,

2007), four letters from residents in support of the policy were printed. Two of the letters reiterated Braun’s down-stream argument; one called for San Diegan’s to overcome their squeamishness about water sources in light of the region’s vulnerability to water shortage; and one expressed faith in the “science of water purification” (p.B9). In response, a desalination advocate argued that “the astronomical cost of toilet-to-tap did not justify [its implementation], and was it was being pushed by “by educated idiots who mean well but have not a clue when it comes to the big picture” (Rosan, 2007, pB9).

According to the author desalination was be a less expensive and more reliable alternative. Another desalination advocate, pointing to the risks involved in “human- managed systems,” with the Otay Water District’s nonpotable waterline mix-up as an example, asked “Isn’t it safer to outright distill or purify the inexhaustible ocean water”

(Ymzon, 2007, p.B9)? Desalination was also supported by Union-Tribune columnist

Logan Jenkins (2007), as “the key to water self-reliance,” although Jenkins also argued that “toilet-to-tap should be on the drawing board unless the proof is irrefutable that the cost will be prohibitive for the foreseeable future” (p.NC2).

On November 14, 2007, Mayor Sanders vetoed the proposal for the reservoir augmentation pilot project because “it would cost too much and require a water rate increase after rates have already gone up twice this year…[and because] San Diegans

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have shown a historic unwillingness to embrace a controversial concept that critics

dismiss as toilet-to-tap” (Hall, 2007). At a City Council meeting on the issue, Marco

Gonzalez, the attorney for the Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper, and Jim

Peugh, “Sanders’ environmental appointee to a panel that advises the Mayor on water and

sewer financial issues,” criticized Sanders’ decision, and asked that the Natural

Resources and Culture Committee to use their majority vote to override the veto (Hall,

2007, p.B1). Peugh’s argument was that recycled water would be “indispensable for the future” and that some of the money the city had budgeted for its nonpotable reuse distribution system could be applied towards the indirect potable reuse demonstration project (Hall, 2007, p.B1).

On December 3, 2007, the City Council overrode the veto of the reservoir augmentation demonstration project by a 5-3 vote, with Council members Faulconer,

Young and Maienschein dissenting (Lee & Vigil, 2007). During the meeting the residents and organization representatives who previously provided testimony in support of the indirect potable reuse reiterated their positions, and were joined by a newly formed coalition of engineers who called themselves “The Friends of Infrastructure” (Lee &

Vigil, 2007). No one at the City Council meeting spoke in opposition of the demonstration project, or on behalf of the Mayor’s position. The next steps for the city

Water Department would be to plan the demonstration project and work with the

California Department of Public of Health to determine their requirements for potable reuse. However, as a political consultant noted, “the staff all report directly to the Mayor.

The Mayor could effectively make the demonstration project a last priority as opposed to

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a first priority. There’s more than one way [for the Mayor] to get around [the city’s

council’s veto override]” (Lee & Vigil, 2007, p.A1).

Media Debate Following the Council’s Reaffirmation.

In the weeks following the City Council’s reaffirmation to go forward with the

indirect potable reuse project, citizens voiced supportive and dissenting opinions on the

issue through letters to the editor of the Union-Tribune. The debate did not address the

underlying motives of the environmentalist groups that had reinvigorated the discourse

on reservoir augmentation, which in the case of San Diego Coastkeeper and the Surfrider

Foundation was pollution abatement, and, for the Sierra Club, the ideal of maximum

beneficial reuse. Rather, the debate focused on indirect potable reuse as if it were a

solution to a water supply shortage, with indirect potable reuse policy antagonists

supporting conservation, desalination or both as preferable to indirect potable reuse.

The Union-Tribune editorial board initially focused on the cost of the proposal.

An editorial referred to “toilet-to-tap” as a “scheme” would cost a projected $10 million in the following year for the demonstration project. This was cited as an example of the

“misplaced priorities of the San Diego City Council,” in light of the city’s fire chief’s request for a second firefighting helicopter after wildfires became public safety issue that year (“Muddled Priorities,” 2007). Union-Tribune blog writer Chris Reed (2007) commented that the “public health criticism of toilet-to-tap was fueled by know- nothingness” but that the fiscal argument against it was “rock solid” (p.G4). Union-

Tribune staff writer Mike Lee, who long supported the reservoir augmentation concept, entered the debate over costs with the argument that Orange County, which had

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implemented a groundwater recharge project, the Orange County Groundwater

Replenishment System, offset costs to local ratepayers with state and federal grants, and

that San Diego could do the same, but the Mayor had yet to apply for such grants (Jan 1,

2008).

Later, the Union-Tribune editorial board entered the indirect potable reuse debate

on the evaluative dimension of human health risks after the Associated Press had

investigated “drug pollution” in the drinking water of major cities, including San Diego,

and found trace amounts of pharmaceuticals (“Toilet to Tap Worries,” 2008). The

editorial board called for the California Department of Public Health not to permit the

city to discharge “treated sewage into the San Vicente drinking water supply until the potential health hazards posed by pharmaceuticals were thoroughly addressed” because

“the sewage would have a much heavier concentration of pharmaceuticals than water diluted by the enormous flow of the Colorado River” (“Toilet to Tap Worries,” 2008, p.B6). The counter-argument from David Schubert, a professor at the Salk Institute, was that, according to the Associated Press findings, San Diegans are already “drinking trace amounts of drugs sourced from the Colorado and other rivers feeding the California

Aqueduct system, and these drugs would be removed through processing proposed in the new program” (Schubert, 2008, p.B7). A similar sentiment was expressed by another letter writer who argued the water treatment system, not the pre-treated water, should be the target of evaluation, and that the advanced treatment train required for indirect potable reuse “would filter out drugs along with killing all other bacteria and viruses”

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(Chase, 2008, p.B9), resulting in raw water of better quality than the water the city

imported from the Metropolitan Water District.

Notably, prior to the City Council’s initial vote to pursue the “North City-3” indirect potable reuse strategy identified in the 2006 Water Reuse Study, the Bay Council environmentalist groups had called for incentivized or mandated water conservation measures as they were “the most effective, cost-efficient and eco-friendly way to enhance local water supplies” (Reznik, 2007, p.B5). These messages were repeated at the October meeting, when the City Council’s Natural Resource and Culture Committee reviewed the

2006 Water Reuse Study. Several of the representatives from environmentalist groups who advocated for the North City-3 strategy also emphasized the importance of water conservation. This was echoed in letters to the editor printed in the Union-Tribune, the spirit of which is expressed by one writer: “Do toilet-to-tap and charge triple for landscape irrigation, I say” (Field, 2008, p.B7).

San Diegans, however, had long averted mandatory conservation. In 1991, when such measures were proposed by the Sierra Club as part of the city’s Clean Water Act consent decree with the U.S. EPA, Mayor O’Connor publicly opposed. In an op-ed column printed in the Union-Tribune column, O’Connor stated such measures would adversely affect area industries, such as laundry, bottling, landscaping, construction, and tourism, and would cost too much to enforce (O’Connor, 1991). Opinion polls conducted by the San Diego County Water District found the idea of conservation was supported by

San Diego residents, but, paradoxically, the same poll respondents also reported that they did not want to have to give up their lawns, even though residential landscaping

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accounted for 40% to 70% of all residential potable water use, depending on the season

(Jiménez, 2003). However, when faced with indirect potable reuse, letters written to the

Union-Tribune in opposition of the City Council’s decision argued for mandated or tax- incentivized xeriscaping, limits on car washing, and other conservation measures (e.g.,

Callahan, 2007; Dahl, 2007; DuBois, 2007; Fillhart, 2007). The general frame of this discourse is expressed in one writer’s conclusion: “considering the options available, flush it and drink it, or not, extreme measures to conserve water might not be so bad”

(Fillhart, 2007, p.B9). This was the very position taken by former City Council member

Bruce Henderson in 2005, who argued conservation would be “cheaper and less risky” than indirect potable reuse, and that the voters should be given a choice on whether they wanted “toilet-to-tap or conservation” (Lee, July 15, 2005).

However, not everyone who opposed indirect potable reuse supported mandatory conservation. In one letter, the writer reframed the water supply policy discourse in terms of sustainable development by questioning why the debate was limited to the options of citizens “having to drink toilet to tap” and “sacrifice and conserve” while the city was rallying over the development of new housing (Loverso, 2007, p.B7). The

Union-Tribune editorial board, which had earlier supported the three-pronged strategy of

“conservation, desalination, greater use of recycled water for irrigation” (“In a panic,”

2007), maintained that recycled water should be used only for irrigation and other nonpotable uses, and that funding for indirect potable reuse should be redirected toward repairs of “disintegrating pipes and other aged infrastructure, would on its own conserve current water supplies” (“Redouble Recycling,” 2008, p.G2).

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Carlsbad Desalination Project.

When Mayor Sanders vetoed the City Council’s decision to go forward with an

indirect potable reuse demonstration project in November 2007, desalination was

declared “the key to water self-reliance” (Jenkins, 2007). During the water supply policy

options debate that followed the overturn of Sander’s veto by the City Council in

December 2007, seawater desalination was the most frequently advocated water supply policy alternative to indirect potable reuse, although some supporters of indirect potable reuse also advocated for desalination as a dual-approach towards diversifying the city’s

“water supply portfolio” (e.g., Jenkins, 2007; Harrington, 2007). Desalination, which relied on the same reverse osmosis membrane technology as indirect potable reuse, was compatible with the 2006 Water Reuse Study’s “North City-1” strategy of expanding nonpotable reuse of reclaimed water. Desalination was claimed to be a safer and more reliable alternative to indirect potable reuse because it would be less prone to “risks inherent in human managed systems,” and the “innumerable contaminants present and yet to come that may not be processed out before it is fed into the water supply” (Yzmon,

2007, p.B9). Indirect potable reuse was arguably more expensive and would provide for a small fraction of the supply, since more would be used than returned. That is, because much of residential potable water was used for landscape irrigation, “most water is not sent back through the sewers, it goes into the ground” (Rosan, 2007, p.B9).

Support for desalination was linked to an existing desalination pilot project at the

Encina Power Plant in the nearby city of Carlsbad. In a poll sponsored by the San Diego

County Water District, 80% of residents supported desalination, and the pilot project had

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been described in the Union-Tribune as “a harbinger of what some day will flow from

North County taps” (Jenkins, 2004, p.NC2). The city of Carlsbad also had a wastewater

recycling facility with an extensive distribution line for nonpotable reuse (Burge, 2005).

With this configuration in place the city of Carlsbad was a model for how the city of San

Diego could potentially augment its water potable supply through desalination and still

recycle wastewater for beneficial nonpotable applications, such as landscape irrigation.

The private developer, Poseidon Resources, proposed to build a 50 million gallon

per day facility (enough to supply about 300,000 people) at the Encina Power Station, but

was met with opposition from environmentalist groups and delayed by litigation and

regulatory hurdles (“Save Desalination,” 2006). The Southern California Watershed

Alliance and the Desal Response Group sued for an injunction, alleging that “flaws in

Poseidon’s environmental impact report should halt work on the desalination project at the Encina Power Station in North County” (Rodgers, July 23, 2006). San Diego

Coastkeeper and the Surfrider Foundation claimed desalination plants were “energy- intensive, which would exacerbate global warming concerns,” and that their “[open] intake structures would kill thousands if not millions of fish” (Reznik, 2007, p.B5). The environmentalists also believed the local availability of desalinated water would induce area development and population growth, which they sought to discourage (Burge, 2008;

Jenkins, 2006; Reznik, 2006).

Objection to the desalination plant was also tied to the environmentalist movement to phase-out once-through cooling, a cooling process during which water drawn to cool a power plant’s turbines is returned to the coastal area or estuary at a

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higher temperature (Rodgers, April 24, 2006). The energy industry contended that there

was “no convincing evidence” that once-through cooling caused any harm to the environment and that the impact of the power plants was like a “flea bite” (Rodgers,

April 14, 2006). However, with an accumulation of empirical data to the contrary, the

California Energy Commission identified once-through cooling as “the single greatest and unaddressed environmental issue associated with power plant operation in the state”

(Rodgers, April 14, 2006).

The environmentalists objected to co-locating a desalination plant with a power- plant that relied on a once-through cooling system as part of their movement to get the power industry to retrofit their power stations with closed-cycle wet systems or dry- cooling systems. On this issue, the environmentalists were joined by fishing groups in an unusual alliance, given that the two groups were otherwise in conflict over the use of marine reserves (Rodgers, April 24, 2006). However, both groups shared the common goal of protecting marine environments from open intakes and once-through cooling systems. The power industry estimated these alternatives would result in a 1% and 2.5% loss in power plant efficiency, and that retrofitting California’s 19 coastal power stations that currently use once-through cooling systems would cost $2 billion to $2.5 billion to retrofit (Rodgers, April 14, 2006).

Despite the objections from environmentalists and fishing groups, in November

2007, the California Coastal Commission conditionally approved, by a 9-to-3 vote, plans for the private developer, Poseidon Resources, to build a 50 million gallon per day facility (enough to supply about 300,000 people) at the Encina Power Station (Burge,

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2008). In January 2008, the Surfrider Foundation and the Planning and Conservation

League filed a legal suit to prevent a Coastal Commission permit for the proposed facility on the grounds that its plans did not meet California Coastal Act requirements because the water intake was not designed with the best available technology (Burge, 2008). At a

Coastal Commission hearing regarding Poseidon Resources’ application for a

construction permit, San Diego’s city attorney, Mike Aguirre, testified in opposition to

the permit for Poseidon Resources, arguing that desalination was the wrong approach to

solving the region’s water shortage, and that “the primary way to gain new water was

through reclamation, referring to the process by which wastewater is converted back into

drinking water” (Rodgers, 2008, p.B1).

However, by August 2008, Poseidon Resources had negotiated all of the permit

conditions required by California Coastal Commission, which included marine habitat

restoration and a reduced carbon footprint through the use of solar energy and energy-

recovery devices, and the purchase of carbon offsets from a public agency or non-profit

organization (Rodgers, 2008). And, in November 2009, a Superior Court judge ruled

against two environmental groups, and the Coastal Commission granted Poseidon

Resources a permit for the Encina Desalination Plant (Burge, Nov. 4, 2009). This was

not the only lawsuit filed by the Surfrider Foundation to prevent the Poseidon plant:

“Between 2006 and 2009, thirteen legal challenges – eight lawsuits and five permit

appeals – were filed against the project mainly by the San Diego chapters of the Surfrider

Foundation and Coastkeeper” (Lee, June 24, 2011). These environmentalist groups

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challenged five separate agency permits for the desalination project without success, with

another appeal filed in August 2011 (Lee, August 19, 2011).

As of February 2012, the Carlsbad Desalination Project was in the early phases of

construction, and negotiations for water purchases between Poseidon Resources and the

San Diego County Water Authority were in development, and are expected to be

finalized in 2012 (San Diego County Water Authority, 2012). To finance the project,

Poseidon Resources has requested to sell $780 million in tax-exempt bonds through the

State of California, which is $250 million over its 2010 cost estimate (Fikes, 2011). The

increased costs of the desalination plant raises the cost of the desalinated water to about

$1,865 per acre-foot (Fikes, 2011), compared to $1,026 for water imported from the

Metropolitan Water District (Gardner, 2010). However, higher price for desalinated

water to ratepayers would be reduced by subsidies, including a $250 per-acre foot rebate,

offered by the Metropolitan Water District to the San Diego County Water Authority and

other water agencies that agreed to purchase desalinated water (Burge, Nov. 12, 2009).

The project is endorsed by the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce, which predicts the

desalination plant will “support 2,000 jobs, generate $350 million in economic stimulus

during construction, contribute $50 million per year to the regional economy and create a

drought-proof drinking-water supply for 300,000 San Diego County residents” (Owen,

2011).

Although the environmentalists were unable to prevent the desalination project,

they did achieve a victory with regard to a mandatory phase out of once-through cooling systems. In May 2010, California’s State Water Resources Control Board adopted a

220 policy on the use of coastal and estuarine waters for power plant cooling that, in essence, applies the federal Clean Water Act for thermal discharges and system intakes. Closed- cycle wet systems or dry-cooling systems are required to be phased-in over a ten-year period between 2012 and 2025, on a schedule that minimizes power disruptions (Lee,

May 11, 2010).

Rather than retrofit the Encina Power Station, its owner, NRG Energy, a New

Jersey-based company, is seeking to build a new power plant with a dry-cooling system, the Carlsbad Energy Center, which is proposed as a brownfield project on the same site as the Encina facility (Lee, May 11, 2010). This became another policy controversy in that the city of Carlsbad, spurred by residents and grass roots organization, Power of

Vision, want the new facility to be a greenfield project on an inland site “to eliminate coastal blight and develop recreation and entertainment opportunities on the coast”

(Burgin, 2010). According to NRG, the coastal site is ideal of its purposes because it is already industrial. The city of Carlsbad voted to symbolically ban the Carlsbad Energy

Center on a coastal site by issuing a moratorium on its construction, and has since spent

$1.75 million in legal costs in its effort to relocate the plant inland (Persinger, 2011). In

March 2012, a review committee for the California Energy Commission, which has exclusive jurisdiction over the licensing of power plants, issued a report recommending approval of the plant at the coastal site. The proposed plant met all the Commission’s requirements and standards, and committee found that the benefits of the project outweighed its land use impact (California Energy Commission, 2012).

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Reissuance of the Clean Water Act Waiver.

The city of San Diego’s five-year section 301(h) Clean Water Act waiver for the

Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant was again about to expire in 2008. When the

previous waiver expired in 2002, San Diego BayKeeper and the San Diego Chapter of the

Surfrider Foundation filed an appeal with the Environmental Appeals Board over the

relevance of the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act to the facility’s secondary treatment

waiver (Barrett & Haas, 2006). Bruce Reznik of San Diego BayKeeper argued that it was “unclear how treated sewage impacts kelp beds or marine mammals,” and that by

opposing the waiver he was “sending a message [that] we need to take care of our ocean

environment. We can’t just continue to use our environment that sustains us as a

dumping ground” (Green, 2002, p.A13). Coastal ecologists at the University of

California, San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography had been monitoring

discharges from the Point Loma facility and reported that the kelp forests hadn’t been

adversely affected (Green, 2002). Under the California Coastal Act of 1976, the

California Coastal Commission was charged with protecting the biological productivity

and the quality of coastal waters by minimizing the adverse effects of waste water

discharges and encouraging reclamation (section 30231). The California Coastal

Commission sided with the environmentalist groups and objected to the Point Loma

facility’s consistency certification regarding discharges from Point Loma Wastewater

Treatment Plant, which the Regional Water Quality Control Board required for its

approval of an ocean discharge variance renewal. In California, the National Pollutant

Discharge Elimination System permits are administered by Regional Water Quality

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Control Boards, and although only the U.S. EPA is authorized to issue the Clean Water

Act Section 301(h) waiver, prior state concurrence is also required (California Coastal

Commission, 2002, p.10).

By October 2002, over the course of several proceedings, the Regional Water

Quality Control Board for San Diego negotiated with the City for modified discharge permit conditions. These included a 6.7% reduction in total annual emission loadings from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, and annual reports on the city’s

progress towards implementing water reclamation, with a note that “the Regional Water

Quality Control Board could impose future reclamation requirements if reclamation

progress was not forthcoming” (California Coastal Commission, 2002, p.7). The Union-

Tribune reported that environmentalists “applauded” the Coastal Commission’s requirements, calling it a “historic decision” (Green, 2002, p.A13). In contrast, City

Council member Jim Madaffer, chair of the city’s Natural Resources and Culture

Committee, which oversees the sewer department, complained that the “the science of the

whole process was being ignored,” and that the Coastal Commission’s requirements

“didn’t make any sense” (Green, 2002, p.A13). The modified permit application was approved by the U.S. EPA, and became effective June 15, 2003 (City of San Diego,

2007).

Following the reissuance of the secondary treatment waiver, the topic largely dropped from the media and public agenda until September 2006, when the City Council held public hearings on sewer and water rate increases. The five-year waiver for the

Point Loma Facility would not expire in July 2008, but the City would have to apply for

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reissuance 180 days prior (City of San Diego, 2007, p.2). Madaffer had advocated

renewing the waiver, but was negotiating with environmentalists and other Council

members to impose a secondary treatment requirement over time (“Renew the waiver,”

2006). The position taken by the Union-Tribune editorial board was that “the

voluminous scientific data compiled from this monitoring make the case that the $1

billion upgrade hastily endorsed by Madaffer would be a complete waste” (“Renew the waiver,” 2006, p.8). In October 2007, the Union-Tribune ran another editorial that argued the monitoring efforts by Scripps Institution of Oceanography that showed the

Point Loma facility “did not harm fish life or the marine environment,” and that “Mayor

Jerry Sanders was right to pursue the waiver rather than squander $1.5 billion on a new sewage plant that would do nothing to improve the environment” (“Get the Waiver,

Sewage Scheme No Help to the Environment” 2007, p.G2).

In November 2007, two weeks before the City Council was to vote on whether to renew the waiver, the Union-Tribune editorial board restated their position. The concern was that political pressure from “a small cadre of environmental activists” carried more weight with the City Council than did scientific data, and a majority on the City

Council’s Natural Resource and Culture Committee would endorse the waiver, “but only with the absurd stipulation that the city must commit today to shift to secondary treatment when the waiver expires,” at which time “most of the current City Council would be termed out of office” and the burden of cost would be “on the backs of another City

Council and future unsuspecting ratepayers” (“Get the Waiver, Will Council Stick It To

Sewage Ratepayers?,” 2007, p.B8).

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In December 2008, the U.S. EPA granted the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment

Plant a preliminary third Clean Water Act ocean discharge waiver, and without any

requirements for the City to increase reclamation (Lee, Dec. 5, 2008). Shortly after, San

Diego’s “two leading pollution-watchdog groups,” the Surfrider Foundation and

Coastkeeper, both represented by attorney Marco Gonzalez, negotiated an agreement

with Mayor Sanders that they would not attempt to block the waiver through litigation,

on the condition that “San Diego pay for a study of how it can use more recycled water

[for industry and irrigation] and thus minimize wastewater discharge to the Pacific

Ocean” (Lee, Jan. 21, 2009, p.B1). Bruce Reznik of San Diego Coastkeeper publicly

agreed that the cost of implementing secondary treatment “may not be the best use of funds” (Lee, Jan. 21, 2009, p.B1). This represented a major frame shift on the part of

Coastkeeper and Surfrider that “generated criticism from inside the environmental ranks”

(Lee, Jan. 21, 2009, p.B1). One critic, Joey Racano of the Ocean Outfall Group, argued that “if the environmental groups choose to go along with breaches in the Clean Water

Act, then who is left to defend the ocean” (Lee, Jan. 21, 2009, p.B1)?

The Ocean Outfall Group and the San Diego environmentalists shared the same policy goal of coastal pollution abatement, but had different frames underlying their policy positions. The San Diego environmentalists maintained a distal perspective and were working towards “eliminating all ocean water sewage discharge” (Reznik, quoted in

Hall, 2009, p.B2). They believed the cost of upgrading the Point Loma plant to secondary treatment would reduce funding that might otherwise be allocated towards reclamation and reuse. Upgrading the Point Loma plant to secondary treatment would

225 effectively give the City permission to discharge all of its wastewater in the ocean. It would incidentally disempower the environmentalists by neutralizing any threat of litigation to block the waiver as a negotiation tactic. The Ocean Outfall Group, represented by Racano, on the other hand, believed secondary treatment was an indispensable intermediary step towards the level of treatment required for reclamation, and sought the more immediate pollution abatement gains that would be achieved by opposing the waiver and upgrading the Point Loma facility.

Despite the agreement between Mayor Sanders and the San Diego environmentalists, the California Coastal Commission voted 11-1 to deny the secondary treatment waiver for the Point Loma facility (Lee, Aug. 13, 2009). The only rationale given for their decision was that “it was time to do it [secondary treatment], and why should San Diego be exempt” (Lee, Aug. 13, 2009). Racano, who petitioned the

Commission to deny the discharge waiver was satisfied that Commission’s “vote finally settled the issue in California that the ocean is a not a garbage pail.” (Lee, Aug. 13,

2009). The city of San Diego appealed the Commission decision and two months later, without any new scientific information or changes in the waiver application, the Coastal

Commission reversed its decision (Lee, Oct. 8, 2009, p.A1). The Union-Tribune speculated “Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supported another exemption, had pressed the commission to override itself” (Lee, Oct. 8, 2009, p.A1). The city of San

Diego would have its third ocean discharge waiver for the Point Loma Wastewater

Treatment Plant, and the conditions of the waiver were later modified to “remove requirements that the city reduce the volume of sewage not fully treated before

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discharge,” though the requirements that the city would continue to “investigate

wastewater reclamation and recycling” were left intact (Associated Press, 2010).

Water Rate Hike Controversy.

In December 2007, when the City Council reaffirmed its position to work towards indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation, as outlined in the “North City-3” strategy of the 2006 Water Reuse Study by overriding Mayor Sanders’ veto, the City

Council’s Natural Resource and Culture Committee directed the Mayor to implement a demonstration project. The city’s water chief, Jim Barrett, admittedly worked on the project with “deliberate speed,” and the Mayor’s office was criticized in the media by

Bruce Reznik of San Diego Coastkeeper for “moving with the gusto of a spoiled kid who doesn’t want to clean up his room” (Lee, July 27, 2008, p.B1). The Mayor’s office was also criticized for increasing the scale of the project, which increased construction costs, and for including in its $12 million budget $1.7 million for public outreach, community meetings and presentations; Lani Lutar, president of the San Diego County Taxpayers

Association, accused the Mayor’s administration of “artificially inflating the cost figures for political reasons, to prevent the project from moving forward” (Lee, July 27, 2008, p.B1).

The final budget submitted by the Mayor’s office for the indirect potable reuse demonstration project at the North City Water Reclamation Plant was $11.8 million (City of San Diego, 2008). The city received a $1.1 million grant towards the project’s cost from the California Department of Water Resources, which was made available through

California’s “Proposition 50” Water Quality, Supply and Safe Drinking Water Projects

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initiative (City of San Diego, 2008). The Mayor’s office maintained that $10.7 million

would need to be raised through a special 3.08% water rate increase (City of San Diego,

2008). City Attorney Michael Aguirre argued the rate hike was unnecessary, and accused

Mayor Sanders of inappropriately delaying the demonstration project because of close

ties to Poseidon Resources, which was then in the process of securing its permit for a

desalination plant from the California Coastal Commission (Hall, 2008). The Union-

Tribune editorial board expressed its opposition to a special rate hike, and called the

indirect potable reuse demonstration project a “colossal waste of ratepayer dollars fraught

with serious public health concerns” (“No Toilet-to-Tap,” 2008, p.B6).

In order to vote on a water rate increase, the City had to first provide ratepayers

45 days advance written notice and hold a public meeting to hear oppositional testimony.

These was required under California’s Proposition 218, “Right to Vote on Taxes

Initiative,” which also allows citizens to prevent a rate increase through majority written protest, as explained in an oppositional Union-Tribune editorial:

If the City Council heedlessly approves the rate hike for toilet-to-tap, ratepayers still will have some recourse under a sweeping state law, Proposition 218. The measure requires that the city notify ratepayers of the proposed increase and provide them a form by which they can protest it. If a majority of ratepayers return the protest cards, a highly unlikely scenario, since most ratepayers will reflexively discard them, the rate hike would be overturned. (“No Toilet-to-Tap,” 2008, p.B6)

The public hearing was held November 17, 2008, during which the city’s water chief, Jim

Barrett explained the Proposition 218 processes, and detailed that protests were received from about 8,000 of the city’s 275,000 water account holders. In explaining the special rate increase for indirect potable reuse demonstration project, Barrett emphasized that

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none of the treated water from the demonstration project would be used for human

consumption, and that the $11.8 million for the project was only an opportunity to collect

data and continue the discussion on whether the city should use highly treated wastewater

for drinking water purposes (City of San Diego, 2008).

Opposition from the ratepayers who testified at the hearing centered on the

themes of overtaxation, improper use of revenues, and improper Proposition 218

procedure by the City with regard to public notice and the hearing process. Only a

handful of residents voiced concern over the concept of indirect potable reuse. Those

who did expressed concern over health risks and relative costs, and emphasized

graywater recycling as an alternative. One ratepayer argued that because the City had

mailed the Proposition 218 notices to property owners, the forms sent to apartment

complex owners often did not reach their tenants, which disenfranchised renters from the

democratic process. Another accused the City using technical jargon and euphemisms

for wastewater in its explanation of the project the Proposition 218 notice to conceal that

it was really the “toilet to tap” project (City of San Diego, 2008).

In a few cases, the opposition towards the 3.08% temporary rate increase for the

demonstration project was conflated with opposition towards the city’s concurrent proposal for an 8.5% “pass-through” rate increase that was to offset a wholesale price increase for water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District via the San Diego

County Water Authority. The objection to the latter was mainly from a fluoridation opponent who argued that the 8.5% rate increase was being misrepresented in the

Proposition 218 notice as a “pass through” of the wholesale price of raw water imported

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from Northern California and the Colorado River because it also included costs

associated with the Metropolitan Water District’s plan to fluoridate the water sold to the

County Water Authority, which itself was controversial policy issue for the city of San

Diego (see Lee, Feb, 6, 2011).

A supporter of indirect potable reuse opposed the rate increase for the

demonstration project, which he argued was unnecessary because data supporting

implementation was already collected under the Aqua 2000 initiative at San Pasqual. The

demonstration plant would be redundant because the technology incorporated in the

proposed advanced treatment train had not changed much in the few years since. But, he

argued, if the City decided to first conduct a demonstration before implementation, the

cost of such a project should be shifted to from ratepayers to prospective vendors. That

is, the City should ask the industry players seeking the contracts for a full-scale plant to

first demonstrate their equipment with pilot project at their cost, which he claimed was a

standard industry practice (City of San Diego, 2008).

Supporters of the demonstration project rate increase included representatives

from the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the Audubon Society, and Bruce Reznik of

San Diego Coastkeeper. The supporters restated the policy positions and arguments

given at the October 29, 2007 hearing when the City Council reviewed the 2006 Water

Reuse Study and voted to go forward with the North City-3 indirect potable reuse strategy. Following the testimony, the City Council unanimously passed, effective

January 1, 2009, a 3.08% temporary rate increase for approximately 18 months until

$10.7 million was raised for the demonstration project, and an 8.5% pass-through rate

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increase. The resolution (R-304435) was approved by Mayor Sanders on November 25,

2008.

Water Purification Demonstration Project.

In 2009 San Diego was in its third consecutive year of drought. By May 2009,

the County Water Authority had issued a “Level-2” drought alert with a mandatory 8%

reduction in water use for its districts (Lee, April 24, 2009). This kept the issue of water

reclamation on the media and public agenda. The Union-Tribune editorial board called

for residents to adopt drought-tolerate landscaping instead of “water-voracious lawns,”

and repeated that the long term solution would be desalination and the increased use of

recycled water for irrigation (“Do Your Part,” 2009). The editorial board also argued that the latter could be achieved, in part, as an alternative use for the $12 million the City

Council voted to spend on its “demonstration ‘toilet-to-tap’ project” (“A Monstrous

Waste Despite Drought,” 2009).

City Council support for the demonstration project diminished during the 2008 election. Prior to the election, the concept was supported by a 5-to-3 majority, but one of the project’s supporters, Scott Peters (District 1), termed-out of office and was replaced by Sherri Lightner, who expressed uncertainty about the project during her campaign. In

one interview, Lightner was asked, “As traditional water supplies dry up, should the city recycle treated wastewater into its drinking-water supply?,” to which she replied, “At this time, there is not enough scientific data to persuade me that toilet-to-tap can be implemented without any risk to water users” (“Election,” 2008, p.CZ4). After taking office in December 2008, Lightner was part of the 5-to-3 council majority that voted to

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approve a $420,000 limnology study of how water from a treatment plant would circulate

in the San Vicente Reservoir (Lee, July 8, 2009).

During the summer of 2009, Lani Lutar of the San Diego County Taxpayers

Association and Bruce Reznik of San Diego Coastkeeper formalized the Indirect Potable

Reuse Coalition to “swing council votes and public opinion” in favor of the reservoir augmentation concept (Lee, Jan. 27, 2010). By February 2010 the Indirect Potable Reuse

Coalition included 13 organizations: BIOCOM; the San Diego Chapter of the Building

Office Managers Association; Citizens Coordinate for Century 3; Coastal Environmental

Rights Foundation; Friends of Infrastructure; Industrial Environmental Association; the

San Diego chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties; the

San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council; the San Diego Audubon Society; San

Diego Coastkeeper; San Diego County Taxpayers Association; San Diego Regional

Chamber of Commerce, and the San Diego chapter of the Surfrider Foundation (Lee, Jan.

27, 2010). The Indirect Potable Reuse Coalition lobbied the City Council to approve a pending $3.28 million contract, for project management and public outreach (Lee, Jan.

27, 2010). Authorization for the contract was approved by the City Council by a 5-to-3 vote in January 2010 and awarded to RMC Water and Environment (City of San Diego,

2010). Lightner’s was one of the three dissenting votes, which was offset by Council member Tony Young’s pivotal affirmative vote. Young stated he “didn’t necessarily support the [indirect potable reuse] concept,” but cast a yeah-vote to “support adequate outreach and adequate management” (Lee, Jan. 27, 2010, p.B1).

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The $6.6 million project bid submitted by Camp Dresser & McKee for the design,

procurement, installation, testing and operation of the demonstration-scale Advanced

Water Treatment Facility went before the Natural Resource and Culture Committee in

July 2010, and was approved by a 6-to-2 vote, with Lightner and Council member Carl

DeMaio again dissenting (City of San Diego, 2010). The demonstration plant, called the

Advanced Water Purification Facility, was completed in June 2011 (Lee, 2011). Notably,

public opposition to the indirect potable has waned. The most recent polls sponsored by

the San Diego County Water Authority found that “Interest in using advanced techniques to produce drinking water by recycling waste water has increased substantially since

2005” (Rea & Parker Research, 2011, p.6). The Union-Tribune editorial board also now supports the concept, as a noted in a recent editorial: “This editorial board has come to accept the latest science - and real-life experience - that says this water would likely be the purest and safest water in the system. Still, there would be a significant yuck factor for many residents to overcome. In our view, it’s time to get over it” (“The Yuck Factor,”

2011). Although this is where the case narrative ends, and the prognosis looks more favorable than ever, the question of whether the City of San Diego will implement indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation still remains unanswered. The issue is still open to public debate. For example, former City Council member Bruce Henderson responded to the Union-Tribune editorial board’s call to “get over it” with a letter to the editor noting that the science behind groundwater replenishment in Orange County, in which “the purified sewage is pumped deep into the ground where it is repurified by gargantuan natural filters,” does not necessarily support reservoir augmentation because

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“there is no similar second purification cycle. Rather, the purified sewage is to be pumped directly to a drinking water reservoir without any additional filtering”

(Henderson, 2011). This type of debate may continue for some time after the demonstration project concludes before the City Council votes on whether to build a full- scale $270 million facility with a 23-mile pipeline to the San Vicente Reservoir.

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CHAPTER 5: A TEXT ANALYTIC FRAME MAPPING

This section divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of IBM

SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys and how it was applied in this dissertation. The second

section provides a frame map of the discourses related to the indirect potable reuse of

treated wastewater via reservoir augmentation as represented in the Opinion section of

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which includes editorials, opposite the editorial page

contributions, and letters to the editor. The third part provides a frame map of policy

actors and organizations and the frame of their arguments, with emphasis given to

ideographic symbols, as represented in Union-Tribune news stories, features, and

columns published in the News, Local, and Zone sections of the paper. The fourth

provides a chapter review and summary of the findings.

The workbench for the Frame Mapping portion of the dissertation consisted of

Microsoft Office 2010, Word and Excel, and IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys

(version 4.0.1). Although IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys is an application

primarily intended for the analysis of open-ended survey responses, it has powerful

linguistics-based extraction, indexing and categorization functionality that fit my

intention of identifying, coding and connecting actors and organizations to their

expressed sentiment and ideographic policy symbols, and reducing the data to the frames

of the discourses underlying their policy positions. Based on the review of literature, the frame is a category or high-level abstraction, like the notion of a “dog,” of which there

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can be many instances that vary with regard to individual attributes, but which maintain a

set of common defining characteristics that would differentiate “dog” from, say, “cat.”

These frames are, in many cases, themes that are indicated by keywords and sentences that include metaphors, slogans or catchphrases, stereotypes, sources of information, moral appeals, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments (Entman, 1993; Gamson & Lasch, 1983; Van Gorp, 2007). Constellations of these idea-condensing symbols can be thought of as an interpretive package that can be further reduced and expressed as a signature (Gamson & Lasch, 1983), meaning

“displayed in shorthand with a deft metaphor, catchphrase, or other symbolic device”

(Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3).

Admittedly, there are other software products designed for data mining and text analytics that may have been more appropriate for an analysis of this type of unstructured textual data, including the IBM SPSS Modeler packages and SAS® Text Miner packages. However, these and other powerful text analytics tools were cost-prohibitive to purchase and not available on a trial basis. IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys includes an interface, package components and data processing capabilities that are similar to its IBM SPSS Modeler packages, and the idea that it is “for Surveys” may be a frame employed for product marketing differentiation, at least more so than it speaks to observable differences in its capabilities. However, because “for Surveys” is the preferred reading, my application of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys as a tool for

Frame Mapping unstructured data brings to mind the perhaps now well-worn cliché of

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the social researcher as a bricoleur, as the anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966), described in the following passage:

His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with ‘whatever is at hand’, that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project… (p.17)

That is to say, Lévi-Strauss’ bricoleur suggests an ability to perform diverse research tasks, with a considerable degree of improvisation in the use of available materials. In this sense, my application of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys is in spirit of the bricoleur, at least insofar as the software is applied for a purpose other than was originally intended, with unstructured text from newspaper items, as historical, observational data, queried as if it were in response to a survey questionnaire.

Specifically, with IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, newspaper content is queried to answer the following research questions:

• Who are the key actors and organizations represented in the discourse?

• What are their policy positions?

• What policy symbols or ideographs are used to support these policy positions?

• What frames do these policy symbols or ideographs represent; that is, what

frames undergird or are used to support their arguments policy positions?

• With what other actors or organizations are they in frame alignment?

IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys.

When I first began of this project, I initially chose as my main workbench an earlier version of this software, SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys (version 2.1). SPSS

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Text Analysis for Surveys was selected over other qualitative data analysis software

programs because its natural language processing components provide rules, constraints,

and semantic taxonomies allow for a reliable interpretation of meanings within the

context of a discourse for large volumes of text. This suited my intentions of addressing

the criticism of researcher subjectivity in framing research, which sometimes approaches

the point of analytical arbitrariness (e.g., as levied by Koenig, 2006; Matthes & Kohring,

2008; Tankard, 2001). It also suited my intentions of extending the statistics-based

Frame Mapping project initiated by M. Mark Miller and colleagues, which is based solely

on term frequency and term co-occurrence, to a linguistics-based approach aided by natural language processing.

The main linguistics components of SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys include an

Apache® text search engine, which provides for indexing, search, spellchecking, hit

highlighting and text parsing, also called tokenization; WordNet® 2.1, which provides a lexical database, or map of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations, called synsets (see

Fellbaum, 1998); and LibTextCat© 2.1, which provides rules for categorization based on patterns found in language called n-grams (see Cavnar & Trenkle, 1994). These resources are applied for term extraction and text link analysis of concepts or patterns of concepts, which can identify opinions and relationships between elements in the text

(IBM, 2010). SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys also allows the researcher to customize dictionaries for specialized sets of codes, such as uncommonly used terms, jargon, and polysemous terms where the preferred meaning is specific to the domain or scope of the case (e.g., in this study the “Point Loma plant” refers to a wastewater treatment plant, not

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a botanical one). Customized dictionaries are essentially syntax files of rules for term extraction that are programmed by the researcher through a graphic user interface. These dictionaries are applied for the purpose of organizing terms into type classifications, which are later used as the basis for the categorization of terms, types, or type-patterns using one or more category-building techniques.

During the course of this project, SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys was upgraded to IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys (version 4.0.1). IBM acquired SPSS in late

2009, and in 2011 released its IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, which advanced

SPSS linguistic-based capabilities with various open-source and proprietary components and updates. A notable distinction between the two versions is that SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys develops type classifications of individual terms, whereas IBM SPSS Text

Analytics for Surveys develops type classifications of concepts, or equivalent classes of terms. That is, the more recent version has greater capacity for synonym recognition and creates type classifications of the concepts that are being signified by the terms in the text, rather than the terms, themselves. This is theoretically consistent with Entman’s

(1993) framing model that considers the frames of communication senders and receivers as mental images that, respectively, translate to or result from the frame communicated in a text, and also that of Hertog and McLeod (2001) who refer to frames in text as

“structures of meaning that include a set of core concepts and ideas” (p.159).

IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys also includes the added feature of hierarchical categorization of concepts, which enables the researcher to build a tree structure of categories and subcategories for concepts with hypernymic and hyponymic

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“is a” relationships (e.g., [red] is a [color]). (Note the use of Courier font as a signification device to denote concepts is an IBM (2011) convention not adopted in this dissertation due to format requirements. Instead, brackets are used.) Hierarchical categorization with subcategories, meaning the organization of concepts into supertypes

(hypernyms) and subtypes (hyponyms) can be theory-driven, meaning, researcher-driven based on predetermined categories of interest specific to the research, or accomplished using semantic network categorization, either independently or in combination with one or more other categorization techniques.

The importance of hierarchical categorization relates to the idea of a frame as a higher level abstraction, as suggested by the metaphor of a supportive structure, such as a skeleton, the chassis of a car, or the frame of a house (Minsky, 1988; Tankard, 2001; Van

Gorp, 2005; Yanow, 2000). Based on this definition, for example, there would be a frame for the notion of a “dog,” of which there can be many instances that vary with regard to individual attributes, but which maintain a set of common defining characteristics that would differentiate “dog” from, say, “cat.” And, as with taxonomies of living organisms, frames will have hierarchical relations corresponding to their level of abstraction. For example, at a higher level of abstraction, both dogs and cats share in common that they eat meat, give birth to live young, have a backbone, have a fixed body plan as they develop, and have bodily cells with a nucleus containing their DNA. While these characteristics may seem at first glance to be a set of random evaluative dimensions, these are definition rules for an inverse hierarchical pyramid structure; a taxonomy of increasing levels of abstraction that would categorize cats and dogs with an

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increasingly greater number of other entities at each level (i.e., order, class, phylum,

kingdom and domain). The categorization techniques available through IBM SPSS Text

Analytics for Surveys, which can be used for exploratory data analysis or as an adjunct to

the researcher’s own category definitions, include concept root derivation, concept inclusion, and concept co-occurrence patterns. The following section provides an overview of the general procedures followed and explains a basic outline for how IBM

SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys was applied in this research.

Preliminary Procedures.

As a preparatory stage for the text analysis, a corpus, or body of documents, was developed. The articles included in the sample were first copied to a Microsoft Excel file, which was used as the data matrix for IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys. For the analysis of discourse participants contributing to the Opinion section of the San Diego

Union-Tribune newspaper, and letters to the editor, each letter to the editor, editorial,

column, and opposite the editorial page contribution was treated as a discrete syntactical

unit for analysis, and treated as if it were a response to survey item. For other analyses,

including the analysis of editorials and news items, the response unit was a paragraph,

meaning that each cell in the Excel workbook included a paragraph of text. A unique

two-part record identification number respectively referenced the article and the

paragraph, with the latter assigned according to the paragraph’s sequence order (e.g.,

UTS12345.01 refers to the first paragraph of article UTS12345). The print date of the

article was entered in a separate data column as a reference variable.

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After importing the articles into IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, a set of

linguistic resources was copied from the application’s basic resource template. The linguistic resources provide the default rules for term linking, extraction and typing from

which the results are then used as the basis for subsequent categorizations. IBM (2011)

refers to these resources as built-in resources and shipped libraries, which contain

dictionaries of concepts (equivalent classes of terms) of particular types (groups of

related concepts). That is, terms in the text identified as nouns, verbs, and adverbs

signify concepts, which are grouped according to type classifications. The rules for

assigning concepts to a particular type are coded to a dictionary, and a set of related

dictionaries is stored in a library. The researcher has the option to develop categories

from the application’s more generic basic resource template, or import a predefined Text

Analytics Package of codes and categorization rules. The basic resource template was

applied in this dissertation because the predefined Text Analytics Packages were oriented

towards brand awareness studies and various kinds of satisfaction surveys (e.g., employee

satisfaction, customer satisfaction, product satisfaction, etc.), which were not particularly

relevant to the current study.

Selection of Linguistic Resources.

The built-in libraries copied to the project included the Core library, the Opinions

library, the Budget library, the Variations library, and the Slang library. The Core library

is a base resource that includes dictionaries for the types, , ,

, , and (IBM, 2011). The Core library dictionaries,

with the exception of , are dictionaries of known named entities and text

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linking rules that enable the identification of unknown named entities. For example, the

Organization dictionary includes a listing of known organizations and rules to link terms

such as “corporation,” “university,” and “institute” with preceding terms, and the Person

dictionary contains a fairly exhaustive list of first names and surnames and rules to link

first names with their successive terms. This is useful for identifying actors and

organizations in the text, but requires some degree of researcher scrutiny (e.g., [Solana

Beach] (a beach), [Gregory Canyon] (a landfill) and [Jack Murphy Stadium] (a stadium)

were—along with many other similar examples—incorrectly extracted to the type,

). The Opinions library includes concepts that represent ,

, , , and , and pattern rules for

identifying expressions that represent opinions and sentiments using text link analysis,

with dictionaries for the types, , , , and

(IBM, 2011, p.196). The Budget library contains a single dictionary of “words and phrases that represent adjectives, qualifiers, and judgments regarding the price or quality of something,” and a Variations library includes synonyms for “cases where certain language variations require synonym definitions to properly group them” (IBM,

2011, p.196). Regular expression algorithms provide rules for identifying and normalizing non-linguistic symbols and syntax patterns for the types: , ,

, , and . These resources are intended to

provide the researcher a starting point for extracting terms from the text and organizing

them into concepts and types prior to categorization using linguistics-based techniques or

according to particular categories of interest. For this dissertation, a Local library of

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custom dictionaries was created specific to the issue of wastewater recycling for the city of San Diego because ideographic symbols were of key interest and because the records include a considerable amount of case-specific terminology.

Modifying Built-in Resources and Creating a Local Library.

The project’s Local library of dictionaries was developed through the IBM SPSS

resource editor interface over several cycles of term extraction, grouping, indexing, and

reclassification. The settings for concept extraction are adjustable, with options for

accommodating punctuation errors; accommodating misspelled words (i.e., fuzzy logic

grouping); extracting uniterms (i.e., single words that are not part of compound words, or

multiterms); extracting nonlinguistic entities (e.g., numbers, dates, currencies,

percentages, etc.); grouping full and partial names together, when possible (for when a

person is first referred to by their full name and subsequently only by their last name),

setting the maximum number of nonfunction words allowable when grouping of similar

concepts (e.g., [Director of the Water Reuse Study] and [Water Reuse Study Director]

would be grouped as a single concept if at least two nonfunction words, “of the,” are

allowed) (see IBM, 2011, p.83). For the analyses performed for this dissertation, where

the data are a set of newspaper items, there was no perceived need to devote

computational resources to accommodate spelling and punctuation errors. However, the

default settings to extract uniterms; accommodate up to three nonfunction words during

concept grouping; apply the uppercase algorithm to identify proper nouns; and group full

and partial names together were consistently applied.

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Coding definitions and rules for organizing the data had to be refined or redefined through repeated processes that involved some trial and error. This effort resulted in four kinds of Local Project dictionaries: type dictionaries, in which concepts are assigned to categories; exclusion dictionaries of concepts that should not be extracted to the concept database; synonym dictionaries; keyword dictionaries of named entities and ideographs; and a global dictionary to reconcile any contradictory type assignments. Such is expected of the researcher. IBM (2011) refers to this process as “fine tuning” (p.8), which means a substantial amount of manual coding and editing is usually required. For example, in the built-in Opinions library the terms “dump” and “dumped” are coded as synonyms for the concept, [disconnected] (see Figure 2). In this example, the research decision was to manually edit the Opinions dictionary to exclude these entries from the since in the context of the case these terms most frequently signify the disposal of wastewater effluent, rather than the concept of [disconnection].

Figure 2. Opinions Library Synonym Definitions for “Disconnected”

The process of coding categories often included visual inspection of the correspondence between the extraction results displayed in a tree-structure and the cells in the Microsoft Excel file from which they were extracted. An example of a domain- or

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case-specific type is . Using a subset of data, a tree-structure of

extracted concepts is shown in Figure 3 (left), with the frequency of

concept occurrence in parentheses. The right portion of Figure 3 shows a corresponding record, with the concepts [drugs] and [pharmaceuticals] highlighted in the text. Colored fonts signify terms accounted by other concept types.

Figure 3. Example of a Tree-Structure with Corresponding Data for a Type

Category Building Techniques.

Following the initial procedures of involved in coding and editing the dictionary, the extraction results were then categorized to identify the key actors and organizations and their relationships, and the frames that underlie their policy positions, as interpreted from their policy arguments, expressed sentiment, and the ideographs and policy symbols that were coded from the text. Category-building involved the categorization of concepts

(equivalent classes of terms), types (sets of semantically related concepts), or type- patterns (patterns of concept types that co-occur in a syntactical unit). The specific approach taken is identified in each section of the Frame Mapping results. Most generally, type classifications of concepts were categorized according to particular groupings of interest with regard to the organization terms identified as named entities and objects (e.g., categories of discourse participants), and type-patterns were categorized

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to link these entities with expressed sentiment for a given category of discourse

participants (e.g., + ). Any particular instances that deviated from this procedural model are noted in the fame-mapping results.

Categorization was aided by IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys linguistics-based category-building techniques of concept root derivation, concept inclusion, semantic network, and concept co-occurrence categorization. The metaphors of a frame as an underlying supportive system, like a skeleton, the chassis of a car, or the frame of a house

(Minsky, 1988; Tankard, 2001; Van Gorp, 2005; Yanow, 2000), suggest that such categories, as higher-level abstractions, are a particular type of frame. The following subsections explain these category building techniques, which guided the analysis but required researcher adjustments, or fine-tuning, to answer the research questions.

Concept Root Derivation.

Concept root derivation is used to identify morphologically-related concept components and synonymous compound word concepts (IBM, 2011, p.114). It has the functionality of generating from text strings of varying lengths and syntagmatic structures a smaller number of synonymous compact categories based on the key concept roots

(IBM, 2011). Figure 4 shows an example of categorization by concept root derivation.

In this example, the root concept [conserve] provides a frame category that includes the morphologically-related concept, [conservation]. The technique also categorizes together the synonymous compound word concepts of [city residents] and [urban residents] under the category, city residents (note the use of italics to denote categories is an IBM (2011) convention). These rules are built-in resources that can be amended by the researcher.

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Figure 4. Example of Categorization by Concept Root Derivation Concept Inclusion.

Concept inclusion categorization is driven by lexical series algorithms to build semantically related categories by identifying base concepts that are subsets of other concepts (IBM, 2011, p.116). For example, in Figure 5, the basis for categorization is the inclusion of the concept, [department]. The concepts [police department] and

[wastewater department], have the same is a relationship to the category (e.g., a police department is a department), but with the concept, [department bureaucrats],

“department” is used as an adjective to describe “bureaucrats” (i.e., a department bureaucrat is a bureaucrat). This is also the case with the subcategory of state department of public health, where [state department of public health] is a “department” and [state health department experts] are “experts.”

Figure 5. Example of Categorization by Concept Inclusion

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Accordingly, if the researcher intends to categorize actors in one group and

organizations in another, this technique would not be appropriate. An important

limitation is that semantically related concepts may not be categorized together unless

synonym rules are created prior to categorization. For the example in Figure 5, the

semantically related concepts of government [bureaus], [agencies], and [divisions] were not categorized with [department]. The concept inclusion technique is most useful when a base concept is of particular interest and the data include context-specific terminology that is defined through customized dictionaries prior to categorization, (IBM, 2011, p.116).

Semantic Network.

Semantic network categorization relies on word relationship taxonomies to create categories of synonyms and hyponyms, with synonyms indicating equivalent meanings and hyponyms indicating a known hierarchical relationship between to concepts (IBM,

2011, p.116). Some examples of when logical hierarchies would exist between concepts

[A] and [B] would include: when [A] is a (type of) [B]; when [A] is a member of [B], when [A] is part of [B], and when [A] is a property of [B]. For instance, Figure 6 shows the concepts, [ocean], [water supply], [lake], and [reservoirs] are types of water resources

and that drinking water is a subcategory consisting of [tap water] and the synonyms

[drinking water] and [potable water].

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Figure 6. Example of Hierarchical Semantic Network Categorization Semantic network categorization can outperform the concept inclusion extraction

technique for data sets with a high occurrence of synonyms for the same concept,

however, when used independent of other extraction techniques, there is a tendency for

figurative language and terms with highly contextualized meanings to be inappropriately

categorized (IBM, 2011). For example, during the preliminary analysis, the concepts of

[mike] and [pick up] from the phrases, “Mike Aguirre, San Diego’s city attorney” and

“Poseidon officials had little choice but to pick up the $145,280 tab” were initially

extracted and categorized under the heading, electro acoustic transducer. However,

when semantic network grouping is applied in conjunction with other extraction

techniques, the algorithms work collaboratively, and the results are improved (IBM,

2011, p.117). The amount of noise is further mitigated by reducing the maximum search distance, adjustable on a scale of 1 to 4, in which choosing a lower value produces smaller categories that are easier to work with (IBM, 2011, p.117).

Concept Co-occurrence.

Concept co-occurrence categorization is a grouping technique that scans the records for frequency patterns of two or more concepts that appear together or near each

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other in a set of records relative to their co-occurrences in other records. When such patterns are identified, IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys creates a conditional rule

for categorizing records using the Boolean operator: “&” (IBM, 2011, p.117). Figure 7

shows an example of category extraction where the concept of [health risks of drinking

reclaimed water] was extracted and paired with the co-occurring concepts to form a series

of subcategories. As with other categorization techniques, the complexity of the

categories and amount of noise can be reduced by reducing the maximum search distance

(IBM, 2011, p.117). For the current study, the search distance was left at the default

setting of 3, for all category building techniques, unless otherwise indicated in the Frame

Mapping results.

Figure 7. Example of Concept Co-occurrence Categorization Category Visualization Tools.

IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys has the capability to provide category

relationship visualizations in the form of category web graphs and bar charts and tables.

The following two subsections explain these visualization tools.

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Category Web Graph.

Category web graphs show the overlap of categories across syntactical units, with

each node representing an identified category (IBM, 2011, p.161). The category web

graph is somewhat similar in purpose to the visualization output from a structural equation model, where an underlying matrix is graphically represented to show relationships in a summarizing format. However, instead of modeling covariance or correlation coefficients, the category web graph models the frequencies of category overlap across analytical units for concepts, types or type-patterns. The example shown

in Figure 8 shows the overlap of categories for a subset of paragraphs that all overlap on the category of economics. Note that the size of the nodes is relative to the number of syntactical units or responses that include the category selected, and that the thickness and color of the line between two nodes denotes the number of common observations

(IBM, 2011, p.161).

Figure 8. Example of Category Web Graph

In this example, the syntactical units are paragraphs, and the largest node is economics. This is because all of the paragraphs in the example subset include at least

252 one term that was semantically categorized as economics, with at least one or more other categories included in each paragraph. That is, the appearance that the discourse was dominated by economics-related concepts is due to the inclusion of only paragraphs that include concepts that were categorized under economics. The category web graph, in this example, therefore, would answer the question of which other concept categories in the set of paragraphs were most strongly related to economics. As Figure 8 shows, after economics, the concept categories, hydrology, finance, and water resources have the largest nodes and the thickest line connectors to economics. The figure also shows a thick line, denoting a higher number of paragraphs in common for this subset of records, between the concept categories, hydrology and water resources.

Category Bar Chart and Table.

The category bar chart and table also shows the overlap of categories across records. However, the category bar chart provides additional quantitative data to supplement the visualization graphic. The table includes the selection percent, which is the percentage of, in this case, paragraphs for the category of the total number of paragraphs represented in the graph. The table also shows the frequency count of the paragraphs for a given category (called “respondents,” since the software is intended for survey research), and the total percent, which is the percent of paragraphs for the category of the total number of paragraphs in the set. The data represented in the bar chart and table example in Figure 9 corresponds to the category web graph in Figure 8.

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Figure 9. Example of Bar Chart and Table

One interpretation of the table data in Figure 9 is that 13 paragraphs were selected

based on the identification of concepts semantically categorized as being related to

economics, which accounted for 7.9% of the total number of paragraphs in this set

(nresponses = 165). This can be compared with other categories, like hydrology and water

resources, which, respectively, overlapped economics in 53.8% and 30.8% of the records,

and were extracted from 27.9% and 18.8% of the total records in the set.

The category web graph and the category bar chart and table are helpful visualization tools, and each provides a different conceptualization of the data. Again, for Figures 8 and 9, only paragraphs that included the category, economics are shown.

This approach is a useful strategy for examining overlap on a particular category of interest. Another approach taken is to present these visualizations for an entire set of records for a particular policy actor or stakeholder group for comparison purposes. The specific approach taken is described in the frame mapping results section.

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Frame Mapping Analysis

The Frame Mapping results and discussion is provided in two parts that, respectively, include editorials, guest columns, opposite the editorial page contributions, and letters to the editor from the Opinion section of the San Diego Union-Tribune, and news stories, feature articles, and columns printed in the News, Local, and Zone sections of the newspaper. Opinion section items were analyzed separately because the goal of the Opinion section analysis did not include text mining for policy actors, since the writer is already a known variable, although a categorization of these discourse participants according to their constructed identity, or person-frame, was performed to answer the question of who is represented in the discourse. With news stories, feature articles, and columns printed the News, Local, and Zone sections, the analysis was intended to first identify key actors from the narrative through text mining, and then develop a map of the frames underlying their policy positions, including key policy symbols or ideographs that characterize these frames.

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Opinion Section.

The initial sample of 95 San Diego Union-Tribune editorials, guest columns, opposite the editorial page contributions, and letters to the editor from the Opinion section of the newspaper was reviewed for relevance, and content data for 77 (81%) items were retained as a Microsoft Excel file for Frame Mapping with IBM SPSS Text

Analytics for Surveys. The 77 items included 44 (57%) letters to the editor, 19 (25%) editorials, 12 (15.5%) opposite the editorial page contributions and 2 (2.5%) feature columnist items (see Appendix A).

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The author of the item was coded under a discourse participant variable and

subject to categorization using IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys. This was done to

answer the question of which key actors and organizations were represented in the

discourse. Discourse participant categories were developed from an analysis of the

textually constructed social identity of the writer, or the writer’s semantic person frame,

by which I mean a symbolically constructed identity signified by framing elements such

as area of residence or organizational affiliations and roles. For this categorization, term

extraction and groupings were initially based on the built-in resources with results

drawing from the Core libraries for , , ,

, and .

The initial assignment of concepts to types was used to create researcher-defined dictionaries for , , , , and

. Following a second term extraction cycle, seven mutually exclusive discourse-participant categories were developed from the types ,

, , and . An overlapping category was created from , which was used to identify relationships among discourse participants with regard to their organizational roles, affiliations and interests. The process is summarized as follows: The initial cycle of text-link analysis, compilation, term extraction, grouping and indexing was dependent entirely on IBM

SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys built-in dictionaries and linguistic resources. The initial results were then used to develop researcher-defined dictionaries, specific to the context of the case and research questions, after which a second term extraction cycle was

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conducted for the assignment of concepts to types according to the project’s modified

Local library. These results were then used as the basis for researcher-defined categories.

The defined categories and the number of descriptors and responses for each are shown in

in Figure 10.

Figure 10. Discourse Participant Categorization for Opinion Section Items

The two largest groupings are the Area Residents category (nresponses = 36) and the

Union-Tribune Editorial Board subcategory (nresponses = 19). Combined, these two groups account for 71.5% of the Opinion section items. The Area Residents category consists of letters to the editor in which the letter writer’s identity was constructed solely from their name and area of residence (e.g., Connie Dahl, San Diego). Records were assigned to this category based on , with a rule for forcing-out records where the location was part of an organization name (e.g., the San Diego Taxpayers Association).

The Union-Tribune Editorial Board represents 19 editorials. This group of records was subcategorized under the San Diego Union-Tribune category (nresponses = 21), which also

includes two columns written by Union-Tribune columnist, Chris Reed. The remaining

257 mutually exclusive categories represent 12 opposite the editorial page contributions, and

8 (18%) of the 44 letters to the editor. These were created from the local dictionary type

. Figure 11 shows a hierarchical categorization of

Organization> and concepts extracted from the text according to their researcher-assigned categories.

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Figure 11. Key Actor Organizational Categories and Subcategories

The results in Figures 10 and 11 answer the question of which key actors and organizations were represented in the discourse. To show relationships by the

participant’s organizational role, an overlapping Actor Role category was developed from

22 concepts extracted from the text to the researcher-defined dictionary.

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Actor Role subcategories were then researcher-defined from the concepts extracted to this main category. The extracted concepts and their associated categories are shown in

Figure 12.

Figure 12. Actor Role Subcategories and Concepts

For the most part, the actor roles included in the person-frame symbolize elite status with regard to institutional authority and expert knowledge: 9 (41%) of the 22

Actor Role responses were categorized as Executive and 10 (45%) were categorized as

Expert. The overlap across subcategories is shown in category web graphs in Figure 13.

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Figure 13. Actor Role Subcategory Web Graph

The category web graph is divided in two sections based on category overlap.

The upper portion shows Executives and Board Members, and the lower portion shows

Experts and Group Members. Note that the Executive and Board Member subcategories are not shared with the Expert and Group Member actor subcategories, and for visualization purposes the results are displayed in two separate category web graphs (the upper and lower portions of Figure 13). Examples of overlapping roles are indicated by

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the triangular relationships in Figure 13. For example, the lower portion of the Figure 13

shows the persona of Robert Simmons, a retired law professor from the University of San

Diego who served as a member of the California Water Reuse Foundation’s Advisory

Committee, is framed by both Expert and Group Member actor role subcategories.

Similarly, the persona of John Christianson includes the dual roles of an economics instructor at the University of San Diego and membership on the Water Committee of

Citizens Coordinate for Century 3. On the upper portion of the graph, overlapping role categories are identified with the persona of Duane J. Roth, which includes CEO of

Alliance Pharmaceutical Corporation, vice-chairman of the San Diego Regional

Economic Development Corporation, and board member of BIOCOM, San Diego. The

other case in the upper graph is the persona of Bruce Henderson, which includes former

City Council member and past president of the American Taxpayers Association.

The analyses in this section answered the question of who was represented in the

discourse of newspaper Opinion section items. The next section applies IBM SPSS Text

Analytics for Surveys to examine the policy positions of these actors, the symbols or

ideographs used to support these policy positions, and the frames that undergird their

arguments and policy positions. The section begins with an analysis of the discourse of

the San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board.

The Union-Tribune Editorial Board.

Much of the mediatized debate in the Opinion section of the San Diego Union-

Tribune resulted from the interplay among the Union-Tribune editorial board, the San

Diego City Council, the Mayor’s office, and letter writers expressing support or

262 opposition to the indirect potable reuse project during the later stages of its development.

When the City Council reintroduced the indirect potable reuse concept on its policy agenda in 2004, the Union-Tribune editorial board was a harsh critic. In 2004, the

Union-Tribune editorial board argued against the City Council’s decision to fund a Water

Reuse Study to explore wastewater reclamation options. From 2007 through 2009, the editorial board argued against the City Council’s decision to go forward with an advanced water treatment demonstration project, and its policy trajectory towards a full- scale advanced tertiary-level water treatment plant for indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation. However, following the implementation of the demonstration project, and a shift in public opinion, the Union-Tribune “got religion, or at least education,” as the executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper put it (Solmer, 2011), and retracted its former argument that recycling wastewater for potable use presented public health risks.

To the contrary, the Union-Tribune editorial board acknowledged the water produced through advanced water treatment technology “would likely be the purest and safest water in the system” (“The Yuck Factor,” 2011).

From January 2004 to January 2011 the Union-Tribune published 19 editorials concerning local water supply and wastewater treatment policy options. These 19 editorials were copied to a Microsoft Excel 2010 file with each paragraph of the body occupying a separate row cell, under the column variable name, body, for total 165 records (paragraphs) that were imported to IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys. The initial cycle of text-link analysis, compilation, extraction, grouping and indexing was performed with the program’s built-in linguistic resources with extraction settings that, as

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described earlier, included an uppercase algorithm for the identification of proper nouns,

and the option to group partial and full person names together when possible.

Figure 14 shows preliminary extraction results for the most frequently occurring

concepts. The list includes concepts that occur in seven or more paragraphs, with

concepts presented in order of descending frequency and the frequency count provided in

the parentheses. The concepts, [san diego], [city council], and [water] occur with expectedly high frequency. The concept, [toilet-to-tap], which was initially extracted 36 times, is the dominant policy symbol used to express the concept of indirect potable reuse. The next most frequently occurring concept is [expensive], and the concepts,

[dollars], which includes the synonym [money], [ratepayers] and [cost] also occur with relatively high frequency, which can be interpreted to suggest the Union-Tribunes discourse on the indirect potable reuse project centers primarily on cost-related considerations. Other key concepts, such as [dump], [waste], and [irrigation], refer to perceived inefficiencies in the city’s practice of discharging reclaimed water treated to a level suitable for irrigation due to a lack of buyers, though contextual background knowledge is needed to make such an inference. In addition to [city council] and

[ratepayers], other actors and organizations frequently mentioned include [mayor jerry sanders], [san diegans], [environmentalists], and the [environmental protection agency].

And other key concepts that frame out the discourse on indirect potable reuse include

[drinking water], [water supply], [sewage water], and [san vicente reservoir].

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Figure 14. Most Frequent Concepts Extracted from Union-Tribune Editorials

Following the initial extraction, other conceptualizations of indirect potable reuse were coded to a local project library’s dictionary. This was completed as a

manual coding stage to develop a dictionary of codes and rules, based on terms and

phrases identified from the initial extraction results, after which the extraction procedures

were repeated. Figure 15 shows the second iteration extraction results for the type

concepts. In total, there are 44 references to indirect potable reuse, of which 36 include

the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph, and all except [reservoir augmentation], [indirect potable

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reuse] and [treat it heavily and then dump it into the san vicente reservoir] employ

“sewage” or “toilet” imagery.

Figure 15. Indirect Potable Reuse Concepts from the Union-Tribune Editorials

To further explore the relationship between the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph and other concepts, the initial categorization of types-patterns was performed using a combination of concept root derivation, concept inclusion and semantic network categorization, with subsequent researcher-adjustments to categorize the concepts. The concepts, [reservoir

augmentation] and [indirect potable reuse], were categorized separate from the toilet-to-

tap category since they are interpreted as different ideographs, meaning that each

category is linked to a different ideology. Specifically, the ideographs, “reservoir

augmentation” and “indirect potable reuse,” which are intended as positive and neutral,

respectively, omit any reference to wastewater and are most generally linked to an

ideology and policy position favorable to the idea of using recycled wastewater as

drinking water, whereas “toilet-to-tap” and similar phrases, such as “turning toilet water

266 to tap water,” and “drinking toilet water,” intended to evoke the idea of “drinking sewage,” are often used pejoratively. The researcher-decision to categorize by type- patterns was based on the intent of matching concepts with expressed sentiment. The

“toilet-to-tap” category, comprised of the 15 remaining descriptors from Figure 15, included 44 (27%) of the 165 total paragraphs in the sample, representing 16 (84%) of the

19 editorials. Figure 16 shows the bar graph and table for the main categories that overlapped the “toilet-to-tap” category in at least two paragraphs of text.

Figure 16. Overlapping Categories for “Toilet-to-Tap” in Editorials

Notably, the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph is linked with cost-related concepts in 21

(48%) of the 44 paragraphs, as indicated by terms like “costly,” “expensive,” “high priced,” “$238 million,” and “multi-billion dollar.” The project is described with negative sentiment in 16 (36%) of the paragraphs, where it was described as a “scheme”

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eight times and a “boondoggle” five, and linked to additional negative sentiment, as

suggested by the descriptors “odiousness,” “unpopular,” “reviled,” and “infamous.” The

interrelationships among these concept categories are shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17. “Toilet-to-Tap” Category Web Graph from Union-Tribune Editorials

To reduce the amount of data for visualization, only concept categories that overlap on four or more paragraphs are shown. The resulting category web graph can be thought of as a frame map of the Union-Tribune editorial board’s ideographic toilet-to-

tap discourse. The category web graph shows type patterns where the City of San Diego and water reuse project are repeatedly paired with negative sentiment concepts from the

IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys Opinions library. For example, [scheme] is coded as having a negative connotation, referring to a plan that involves deception. The concepts [boondoggle] and [squandering] is negative, referring to wasteful government

spending, and [unpopular], [reviled], and [infamous] signify negative public opinion.

The nodes for cost, cost/expensive (where expensive is a subcategory of cost), risk, and

268 risk/health risk (where health risk is a subcategory of risk) suggests that costs and risks are key evaluative dimensions of editorial board’s opposition to the indirect potable reuse plan, with the implication that the project is expensive and presents unwarranted health risks. This structure is validated with a review of some sample excerpts, which for the purpose of example are shown with the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph and terms categorized as negative sentiment, cost, risk, and waste emboldened:

San Diego’s infamous “toilet-to-tap” plan is back once again, courtesy of Water Department bureaucrats who are prodding the City Council to adopt this very costly boondoggle (“Yuck! ,”2006).

Some City Council members want to add $200 million for the notorious “toilet- to-tap” program (“Renew the Waiver,” 2006).

The first is the notorious “toilet-to-tap” project, a mindless $238 million program that comes with uncertain health risks…Regardless of the costs, which are substantial, the “toilet-to-tap” proposal should be scratched for health and safety reasons (“Rate Hike Caveats,” 2006).

What the lab found, a potentially sickening bacterium, makes an even stronger argument against the city of San Diego’s proposed “toilet-to-tap” program to try to turn sewage water into drinking water (“Water Foul,” 2007).

What’s more, City Attorney Mike Aguirre hopes to persuade federal regulators to require San Diego to adopt his enormously costly and wildly unpopular toilet- to-tap program (“Perrier, it isn’t,” 2007).

This followed his urgent demand a week earlier for revival of the hugely costly and widely reviled toilet-to-tap boondoggle (“In a Panic,” 2007).

Many of the same supporters of secondary treatment also are advocates of the even more costly “toilet-to-tap” scheme (“Get the Waiver, Sewage Scheme,” 2007).

As the City Council blunders toward a multibillion dollar “toilet-to-tap” program, the colossal squandering of 19,000 acre feet at the North City Water Reclamation Plant is rarely mentioned… a comprehensive purple piping system would be a much better investment in water conservation and reuse than the “toilet-to-tap” boondoggle... Mayor Jerry Sanders sensibly promises to veto this unpopular scheme…(“A monstrous waste,” 2007).

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This duplicitous approach is unconscionable, especially for a City Council majority who recently approved the enormously expensive “toilet-to-tap” boondoggle (“Get the Waiver, Will Council,” 2007).

The City Council overrode Mayor Jerry Sanders’ veto of the notorious “toilet-to- tap” scheme, which will cost a projected $10 million next year (“Muddled Priorities,” 2007).

The upper left portion of the category web graph (Figure 17) is a constellation of concepts related to the repeated citation of the 1998 National Research Foundation Study that concluded that indirect potable reuse should be an “option of last resort,” which becomes an ideographic slogan that is linked to “toilet-to-tap” by a chain of signification with about the same amount of overlap as with the ideographic symbols, “scheme” and

“boondoggle”. The following excerpts are the “option of last resort” paragraphs, which were repeated across four of the Union-Tribune editorials, nearly verbatim:

In a key study, the respected National Research Council concluded that turning toilet water to tap water should be only “an option of last resort” because “many uncertainties are associated with assessing the potential health risks of drinking reclaimed water.” The study also noted that “one concern about potable reuse of reclaimed water is the potential health risk from little known or unknown pathogens.” San Diegans do not need to run the risks associated with drinking toilet water. The City Council should reject this project once and for all (“Yuck! San Diego Should Flush ‘Toilet-to-Tap’ Plan,” 2006).

In a key study, the respected National Research Council warned that converting toilet water to tap water should be employed only as “an option of last resort” because “many uncertainties are associated with assessing the potential health risks of drinking reclaimed water... One concern about potable reuse of reclaimed water is the potential health risk from little known or unknown pathogens.” (“Rate Hike Caveats: ‘Toilet to Tap’ Sewage Plant Overhaul Must Go,” 2006).

What’s more, recycling water for irrigation averts the potential health risks in drinking recycled sewage water. In a key study, the respected National Research Council warned that converting toilet water to tap water should be done only as “an option of last resort” because “many uncertainties are associated with assessing the potential health risks of drinking reclaimed water.” Mayor Sanders

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is right to veto the “toilet-to-tap” experiment (“A Monstrous Waste: City Dumps Precious Reclaimed Water into Pacific,” 2007).

In a key study, the respected National Research Council warned that converting toilet water to tap water should be done only as an option of last resort because many uncertainties are associated with assessing the potential health risks of drinking reclaimed water. The AP investigation certainly underscores the National Research Council’s admonition. (“Toilet to Tap Worries: Do Drugs in Sewage Flow Pose Health Threat?” 2008).

An interesting point of note is that only in the most recently published editorial does the title of the editorial correspond with the “health risk” frame expressed in the paragraph. The others, respectively, frame the issue in terms of disgust (“Yuck!” 2006), costs (“Rate Hike Caveats,” 2006), and city mismanagement (“A Monstrous Waste,”

2007). That is, while the headline of the editorial is certainly a framing device, it is not necessarily a totalizing statement that addresses all of the frames in the text. In some cases the headline only loosely correlates with the frame of editorial, such as with

“Yuck!” (2006), which focuses more on cost and health risk than on palatability.

The discourse of the editorial board was highly ideographic and polemical, loaded with “drinking sewage” type symbols intended to skew public perception. Public disapproval is incorporated in the frame where the project is described as “unpopular,”

“reviled,” and “infamous.” The ideas of government waste and nefarious motives are included in the frame, respectively, when the project is described as a “boondoggle” and a “scheme.” However, the frames that undergird the board’s policy position, as suggested in the web graph, are chiefly costs and risks. Specifically, the editorial board argued the costs of indirect potable reuse were higher than policy alternatives, such as desalination and non-potable reuse via purple pipe distribution, and that the benefit of the

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project, a relatively small quantity of potable water, did not justify the potential health

risks associated with unknown pathogens and concentrated pharmaceuticals in the water

supply. These are rational arguments embedded in an otherwise ideographic discourse.

Letters to the Editor.

The sample of 77 Opinion section items from the San Diego Union-Tribune

included 44 letters to the editor on the topic of indirect potable reuse and related policy

options, such as conservation and seawater desalination, printed from August 2004

through January 2011. Of the 44 letters, 11 (25%) were published between August 2004

and August 2006. This period is marked by the San Diego County Water Authority’s

public opinion polls concerning water recycling applications, and concludes with the findings of the city of San Diego’s 2006 Water Reuse Study, both of which were undertaken as part of a legal settlement with San Diego BayKeeper and the Surfrider

Foundation over sewage spills and overflows off of Point Loma.

There is then a concentration of 25 (57% of the 44 total) letters printed during the seven-month period, September 2007 through March 2008. This time frame includes a series of significant events that occurred in a relatively compact period. First, it follows the media coverage of the closure of two food preparation businesses by the California

Department of Public Health after they were inadvertently connected to the pipe distribution system for transporting reclaimed water, treated only to the standard suitable for irrigation, which the city of San Diego sold to the Otay Water District (Sierra, 2007).

This occurred in the city of San Diego’s neighboring city of Eastlake, and the event was used by the Union-Tribune editorial board as ammunition in a policy argument against

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the proposed indirect potable reuse and reservoir augmentation project (“Water Foul:

Warning from Otay,” 2007, p.B10). Then, in September 2007, a U.S. District court ruling reduced the transfer of waters from the Sacramento Delta to Southern California in

order to protect the delta smelt, a species of fish that had become endangered from over-

pumping and reduced water levels—a situation environmentalists sought to prevent two decades earlier with the since-defeated proposal for the Peripheral Canal (Lee, Sept. 5,

2007). The ruling to reduce water transfers from the delta was followed by a campaign for the reservoir augmentation project by San Diego’s City Attorney, Mike Aguirre, who, as an ultimatum, threatened a moratorium on large housing and commercial developments that required water guarantees (Vigil, 2007, p.B1). Subsequently, in late

October 2007, San Diego’s City Council voted to adopt the 2006 Water Reuse Study’s

“NC-3 Strategy” of reservoir augmentation, and initiate an advanced tertiary-level water treatment demonstration project in preparation for a full-scale indirect potable reuse and

reservoir augmentation project. This was the option of choice for maximizing reuse of

the reclaimed water treated at the North County Reclamation Plant. The city of San

Diego’s mayor, Jerry Sanders, vetoed the Council’s decision in mid-November, but the

City Council overturned the veto with a majority vote three weeks later. Fourteen of

these letters (32% of the 44 total and 56% of the 25 published in the September 2007

through March 2008 timeframe) were printed between December 6, 2007 and March 29,

2008, the four month period immediately following the City Council’s reaffirmation of

its vote on the reservoir augmentation pilot project as part of the media debate that

followed the overturn of the Mayor’s veto.

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The remaining 8 letters (18%) were printed from June 2008 through January

2011. These included extensions of the earlier debate over the necessity, safety, and

costs of a full-scale reservoir augmentation project relative to other options, such as dual- piping for nonpotable reuse, mainly landscape irrigation, and desalination, which had become increasingly cost-effective with improvements in reverse osmosis technology.

The 44 letters to the editor were copied to a Microsoft Excel 2010 file, with each letter occupying a separate cell under the variable name, body. The complete letter, rather than the paragraph, was taken as a syntactical unit for analysis. This approach can be contrasted with that taken in frame mapping the Union-Tribune editorials, which were analyzed as paragraphs. This decision was based on the research assumption that the editorials were constituent of a larger, aggregate narrative, representing the single perspective of the Union-Tribune editorial board, which was subsequently validated, at least in part, by the editorial board’s repetitive use of the same arguments and framing devices, such as “cost,” “health risk,” and the “toilet-to-tap” and

San Diego’s reservoir augmentation project?” as a preliminary step to identifying the frames underlying these policy positions and the ideographs used to symbolically link ideological stance of the letter writer to a particular policy position.

Notably, of the 44 letters, 31 (70%) were written in response to a Union-Tribune article or editorial, where the writer referenced the original article or editorial to provide

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the context for the letter. That is, the editorial or article that motivated the letter writer is

cited in order to evoke the particular framework he or she intends to modify with new

information. Reference to a preceding article or editorial for this purpose can be thought

of as a particular type of framing device Goffman (1981a) called a footing. For example, one of the letters, written by Marsi Steirer, then Deputy Director of City of San Diego

Water Department and Director Water Reuse Study, begins with the sentence: “The article ‘Few Thirst for Recycled Tap Water, Survey Says’ (News, August 16) addresses the results of a public opinion survey recently conducted by the San Diego County Water

Authority” (2004, p.B9). This sentence is the footing Steirer established from which to

explain the city’s Water Reuse Study and the reservoir augmentation process, and to

criticize the media’s inaccurate portrayal of the city’s “repurification project” as “toilet-

to-tap” (2004, p.B9). The inclusion of the headline of article or editorial that motivated

the letter writer provides a frame of reference for the reader, but is potentially

problematic for text analysis when the sentiment of the headline is contrary to that of the

letter writer. For the categorization of letters to the editor, a research assumption is that

the policy arguments, expressed sentiment, and ideographs that frame the discourse are

textual indictors of the cognitive frames held by the writer. Accordingly, to avoid

inaccurate categorizations of the letter writers’ expressed sentiment, the headline of

original article or editorial that motivated the letter writer, if referenced, was redacted as a

preliminary stage in the analysis.

The Excel file was imported into IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, and the

initial cycle of text-link analysis, compilation, extraction, grouping and indexing was

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conducted using the program’s built-in linguistic resources and the San Diego case local

project library, initially developed during the analysis of the Union-Tribune editorials.

Following the initial extraction, the San Diego case project library was modified to

identify policy positions and supportive and oppositional policy arguments. The

category, Policy Position, was created as a preconceived core category of interest

believed to be interpretable from the 44 items selected though the theoretical sampling

process. Under this main category two subcategories were created: Supports IPR and

Opposes IPR. And, within these subcategories, the initial extraction results were used as

an index, as was done in the analysis of discourse participants, and as illustrated earlier in

Figure 3, to identify thematic classes of support and opposition for the city of San

Diego’s indirect potable reuse project, including alternative policies, and ideographic

policy symbols.

The identification and classification of arguments, aided by the index of concepts

and types extracted using the Core library and San Diego case project library, was

completed during the coding stage of the analysis. Type dictionaries were developed to

include whole sentences or sentence fragments as thematic summarizing statements from

which categories were created to represent subclasses of supportive and oppositional

arguments. The process is similar in its objective to that of an interpretive media package/frame package approach (c.f., Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Van Gorp, 2007).

Methodologically, the difference is that in the current project, IBM SPSS Text Analytics

for Surveys served as the environment in which the researcher worked to thematically

organize the data, and natural language processing was applied to perform an initial text-

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link analysis for an extraction of frame-relevant concepts. The advantages of this

approach over open coding are that natural language processing efficiently outputs reproducible concept extraction results, and the researcher-developed dictionaries for

types of thematic summarizing statements or “frame packages” can be accumulated as

part of a larger text analytic package that are reusable for subsequent applications.

Of the 44 letters to the editor, 2 (7%) expressed neither support for nor opposition

to the city of San Diego’s reservoir augmentation proposal. One included an argument in

support of expanding Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant to include secondary level

treatment, which was being considered by the City Council as an alternative to renewal of

the city’s Clean Water Act ocean discharge waiver (Vigil, 2007). This article was

initially included in the sample because the proposal for secondary-level treatment had

become conflated with that for indirect potable reuse, with San Diego’s city attorney and

environmentalists supportive of both measures (Reed, 2007; Vigil, 2007). In the other,

Steirer (2005) denies the Union-Tribune editorial board’s accusations of “secret plans” to

reactivate the water purification project of the 1990s, and defends the Water Reuse Study

as the “marching orders” of the City Council to investigate various policy options for the

Water Department, including groundwater storage, expanding the dual-piping distribution

system, and wetlands development. However, Steirer’s earlier letter to the editor (2004),

written in support of water recycling, is included among those remaining in the sample.

Of the remaining 42 letters, 18 (43%) expressed direct opposition to the proposal,

or were written in support of a policy alternative, such as increased conservation,

nonpotable reuse, or desalination, and 24 letters (57%) were written in support of indirect

277 potable reuse. The categories created for these groups were, respectively, Opposes IPR, which included 52 descriptors or coded statements indicating a particular frame or evaluative issue dimension, and Supports IPR, which included 47 descriptor codes. The distribution of letters to the editor (responses) and descriptor codes across categories and subcategories is shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18. Letters to the Editor: Thematic Categories of Support and Opposition

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Opposition. Within the group of the 18 letters in the Opposes IPR category, 7

(39%) expressed support for conservation as a competing policy alternative, with 17

descriptor codes indicative of this policy position across 5 subcategories of conservation.

The distribution of the coded statements as categorized is shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19. Letters to the Editor: Water Conservation as a Policy Alternative

The descriptors shown in Figure 19 were coded during the “fine tuning” stage of the text analysis. Root concepts, such as [conserve] and [limit], and other conservation-

related concepts such as [rain barrels] and [mandatory rationing], and, in the context of

the case, [lawns] and [landscaping] were first coded and assigned to in

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the San Diego case project library and then mapped to their corresponding text, from

which the concept codes were expanded and the Conservation Alternatives to IPR

subcategories shown in Figure 19 were developed. Water Conservation Unspecified

Measures includes statements that call for conservation as an alternative to indirect

potable reuse but do not go into further detail regarding specific water conservation

measures. New Housing Construction includes a statement proposing that conservation efforts should be maximized in new housing construction. Mandatory Restrictions on

Water Use includes statements calling for mandatory rationing and restrictions for car

washing, lawn size and watering. Water Conservation Incentives include tax incentives

for drought-resistant plants and low-flush toilets, provision of rain barrels to city

residents at a reasonable cost, and tiered water rates. Voluntary Water Conservation

Measures include the use of drought-resistant plants, taking shorter showers, and making

sure the dishwasher and washing machines are loaded to capacity when used. Note that

the descriptors, [limiting the size of grass lawns], [require artificial lawns], and [drought

resistant plants], each have two responses, meaning that these ideas were each manifest in

two letters. In these cases the verbatim text varied and concept synonyms for these

equivalent classes of terms were coded to the local project library prior to categorization,

as shown in Figure 20.

Figure 20. Letters to the Editor: Water Conservation Synonyms

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Ten of the letters to the editor expressed support desalination as an alternative to

indirect potable reuse. For this category, the key concept, [desalination], was mapped

from the extraction results pane to its corresponding text and the sentence or sentence

fragment indicating support for desalination was coded to the San Diego case project

library type, . This resulted in 12 descriptor statements across

the 10 letters to the editor, as listed in Figure 21.

Figure 21. Letters to the Editor: Support for Desalination

Other categories created for opposition to indirect potable reuse, or support for a

policy alternative, include IPR Expensive, which includes statements regarding the cost

of indirect potable reuse as being greater than that of water policy alternatives;

Government Incompetence, which includes statements regarding past government failures

and a lack of faith in government to safely administer a potentially hazardous indirect potable reuse project; Health Risks, which includes statements relating to concerns that indirect potable reuse presents potential adverse health consequences; Nonpotable Reuse as Alternative, which includes statements indicating a preference for the competing North

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City Water Reclamation Plant strategy (NC-1) of maximizing beneficial reuse of reclaimed water though non-potable applications, such as irrigation and agriculture; IPR

Distasteful, which include statements regarding a psychological aversion to indirect potable reuse; Water Shortage Hoax, which includes statements suggesting that the idea that potable water is in desperately short supply is being exaggerated by government and the media; and Slow Population Growth as Alternative, which includes a statement relating the indirect potable reuse project with the permitting of new housing and other construction projects. Figure 22 shows the coded descriptors for these other oppositional statements against indirect potable reuse and in support of a competing water policy alternative, such as non-potable reuse applications.

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Figure 22. Letters to the Editor: Other Opposition to IPR

In 4 (22%) of the 18 letters written in opposition to indirect potable reuse, the writer argued that the project was expensive. Six descriptors were coded from the index concepts, [cost] and [expensive], and concepts assigned to . The latter was created through a built-in regular expression definitions that identify monetary units (e.g., numeric values and terms signifying numeric values preceded by “$” or followed by

“dollars”).

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In 3 (17%) of the letters, the writer expressed concern over the government’s

ability to effectively manage an indirect potable reuse program. Five descriptor

statements across were coded as indicating this theme. These were initially indicated by

the index concepts, [trouble], [arrogant], [bureaucracy], [short on brains], and

[incompetent], which were first extracted and assigned to types according to the built-in Opinions library definitions.

In 4 (22%) of the oppositional letters the writer expressed concern over health risks associated with indirect potable ruse. These descriptors were coded from index concepts assigned to the type, , which was initially developed during the analysis of Union-Tribune editorials. Key index concepts included [epidemiology],

[disease, health concerns], and [human consumption].

In 3 (17%) of the letters, the writer expressed support for non-potable reuse,

namely the use of recycled water for irrigation and agriculture. Index concepts, initially

developed during the analysis of Union-Tribune editorials, included [irrigation] and

[agriculture], which, based on the context of the case study, were assigned to the type,

In 2 (11%) of the letters the writer expressed that indirect potable reuse was

distasteful. The indexical concepts for the coded descriptors were [yuck] and

[distasteful]. These were type concepts assigned by the built-in Opinions

dictionary.

In 2 (11%) of the letters the writer argued that the idea of a water shortage was

exaggerated and that a water shortage was not really as dire as the government or media

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would have citizens believe. The index concepts, [not desperate] and [water shortage],

were mapped to the full text of the letters signifying this theme. The concept of [water

shortage] was coded to the type during the analysis of Union-Tribune

editorials, and “not desperate” was assigned to a type by the built-in Opinions dictionary. After mapping these concepts to their full text, researcher interpretation was then used to assign the expressions to this category. For example, the statement: “The situation is in no way so desperate as to justify us being railroaded into accepting toilet- to-tap,” was coded and assigned to the Water Shortage Hoax category.

The category, Slow Population Growth as Alternative, includes one letter. Here the index concept was new development. The actual text of that letter coded for category assignment reads: “…We will soon be drinking ‘toilet to tap’ in order to save this precious liquid. Why is the public being asked to sacrifice and conserve while new development is allowed to go forward?” This statement was initially assigned to the type, , based on the concept “conserve.” However, in reading the text, the interpreted meaning was that the writer does not advocate for water conservation, but sees it as an oppressive measure, and considers both conservation measures and indirect potable reuse as “sacrifices” the government asks of the public.

The relationship between these categories is illustrated by the overlapping themes shown in the category web graph in Figure 23.

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Figure 23. Letters to the Editor: Category Web Graph for Opposition to IPR

Support for desalination, which is most generally opposed by indirect potable reuse proponents because of its environmental impact, comprises the largest category,

Desalination as Alternative, having 10 observations, and is most strongly tied to arguments that indirect potable reuse is expensive (3 letters) and presents potential health risks (3 letters), though only one letter, written by former City Council member, Bruce

Henderson, makes all three arguments. Of the seven letters expressing preference for conservation alternatives, two letters each express preferences for desalination and nonpotable reuse as policy alternatives, and the ideas that indirect potable reuse is expensive, presents health risks, and is distasteful. However, none of the three letters expressing support for nonpotable reuse include the issue dimensions of high cost or the palatability of indirect potable reuse, but instead also focus on health risks and are paired with desalination and conservation as policy alternatives.

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With regard to ideographs and policy symbols, those signifying water reuse are categorized in Figure 24.

Figure 24. Opposition Letters: Descriptors of Water Reuse

Fourteen (78%) of the 18 letters referred to the proposed indirect potable reuse project as “toilet-to-tap” or used another expression that made explicit reference to the idea of “drinking toilet water” such as “flush it and drink it,” or “drinking recycled sewage water.” These policy symbols that exploit graphic imagery to evoke a negative visceral reaction from readers are suggestive of an ideographic discourse. In contrast, only 4 (22%) of the 18 letters used more neutral descriptors for water reuse, such as “the

San Vicente Water Reuse Project.” Among the water reuse (other) descriptors, “purple pipe,” could be interpreted as ideographic in that it synecdochically signifies the policy alternative of non-potable reuse. That is, a “purple pipe” discourse can be ideologically aligned with a policy position of nonpotable reuse, in which a purple sleeved pipe

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transports reclaimed water treated to a level suitable for landscape or agricultural

irrigation or other nonpotable uses. However, this is not always the case since “purple

pipe” can also refer to the level treatment required prior to advanced tertiary treatment for

reservoir augmentation, and may be used synecdochically by reservoir augmentation supporters. This dual interpretation and synecdochical use of the same policy symbol is similar to the < wolf > and < sovereignty > ideographs in Tracylee Clarke’s (1999, 2002) case studies, in which members of Native American Tribes and their policy antagonists each attach their own meanings and ideological linkages to the same symbols.

Support. Within the group of the 24 letters in the Supports IPR category, 17

(71%) were categorized under the theme of Safety Relative to Current Water Supply.

This category includes three subcategories: Imported Water Contains Upstream

Discharges (nresponses = 8), All Water is Recycled (nresponses =7), and Safety Assurance

(nresponses = 8). There were 26 coded descriptors across the 17 letters that comprise these

three subcategories of Safety Relative to Current Water Supply. These are shown in

Figure 25.

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Figure 25. Letters to the Editor: Safety Relative to Current Water Supply

The Safety Assurance subcategory includes 9 descriptors across 8 (33%) of the

supportive letters. Letters assigned to this subcategory include arguments or statements

that expressed the idea that highly treated reclaimed water is safe to use as a raw water

source, or at least as safe than the water imported from the Colorado River. The key index concepts for this category were [safe], [is all there], [clean], [higher-quality],

[technology], [treatment] (including the synonym, [processing]), and [pristine]. Notably,

[pristine] was printed in quotes (i.e., “pristine”) to signify ironic usage, meaning that

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writer intended to communicate that the existing water supply is “not pristine.” Such use

of quotation marks, as Goffman (1974/1986) wrote “is one of the less gentle framing

devices available” (p.109). This ironic use would vary from scare quotes, which more

commonly communicate that the generally accepted symbol for concept being signified

varies from how the writer would personally choose to signify the concept (e.g., the so-

called “toilet-to-tap” project).

The Imported Water Contains Upstream Discharges subcategory included 10

coded descriptors across 8 (33%) of the 24 letters written support of indirect potable

reuse. Letters in this subcategory included the theme that San Diego’s imported water

contains sewage discharges from upstream point sources. The 10 descriptor statements

were coded from key index concepts [upstream] and [downstream] in addition to

researcher interpretation of the extracted concept, [already made use of] and text link

expressions that formulated the concept, [from elsewhere], as indicated in the expressions: “from other cities,” “from out eastern and northern neighbors,” “from Las

Vegas and lots of others,” and “from the Colorado River.” A key distinction between the

Imported Water Contains Upstream Discharges and the Safety Assurance subcategories

is that evaluative frame is reversed (e.g., see Tversky & Kahneman, 2006). That is,

statements assigned to Safety Assurance focus on the purity, cleanliness and safety of

highly treated reclaimed water, whereas those assigned to Imported Water Contains

Upstream Discharges emphasize the impurity of imported water. However, all three subcategories are related in that they speak to the general theme of safety of indirect

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potable reuse relative San Diego’s current raw water supply of imported water from the

Colorado River.

The All Water is Recycled subcategory includes 7 (29%) of the 24 letters written in support of indirect potable reuse. Letters assigned to this subcategory include the general theme of acceptance toward the water cycle as a natural inevitability that would simply be replicated and accelerated with the reservoir augmentation project. Key index concepts includes [all], [every], and [always]. The key distinction between the All Water is Recycled and the Imported Water Contains Upstream Discharges subcategories is that the former implies a more of a universal idea and the latter is contextualized. For example, the claim that “every drinkable drop of water on the planet has forever been filtered and filtered again” applies universally, whereas the claim that “we are already drinking purified sewage water from the Colorado River” refers only to the water San

Diego imports from the Colorado River. However, all three subcategories are closely related and are categorized as subcategories of Safety Relative to Current Water Supply.

Other categories created for letters supporting indirect potable reuse include

Support All Beneficial Reuse (nresponses =4), Disaster Readiness (nresponses = 3), Criticism of

“toilet-to-tap” slogan (nresponses = 6), and Cost-effective Relative to Alternatives (nresponses

= 4). Figure 26 shows the 21 coded descriptors for these other statements of support for indirect potable reuse.

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Figure 26. Letters to the Editor: Other Support for Indirect Potable Reuse

The Support All Beneficial Reuse subcategory includes 4 (17%) of the letters of

support. Letters assigned to this subcategory include statements in which the writer

expresses general support for water supply development. The key index concepts used to

code these statements were [support], [reclaim], [reuse], and [optimize] (including the synonyms, [make the most of], and [increase the use of]).

The Disaster Readiness subcategory includes 3 (13%) of the 24 letters of written in support of the reservoir augmentation water reuse project. Letters assigned to this subcategory include claims that indirect potable reuse would hedge against the loss of

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imported water due to an earthquake or other disaster. This category was developed from

the key index concepts [seismic, disaster], and [emergency].

The Criticism of “toilet-to-tap” slogan subcategory includes 10 coded descriptors

across 6 (25%) of the 24 letters. Letters assigned to this subcategory include statements

critical of the use of “toilet-to-tap” as a policy symbol by the media and project

opponents. Key index concepts for coding these entries include [term], [slogan],

[headline], [moniker], [misnomer], [image], [debate], [dialogue] and [quote]. These terms were initially extracted under the local case dictionary type, .

The Cost-effective Relative to Alternatives subcategory includes 4 (17%) of the

supportive letters. Letters assigned to this subcategory include claims that indirect

potable reuse is less expensive than the dual-piping infrastructure required for nonpotable reuse, and that the cost of not implementing an indirect potable reuse program will lead to higher water rates in the long term. The key index concepts include [cost]

(including [cost-effective]) and [expensive], and researcher interpretation was used to

categorize these statements according to their complete content. These terms were

extracted under the built-in dictionary type, .

The relationship among categories to which the letters to the editor were assigned

is shown in the category web graph in Figure 27. The Disaster Readiness category is not

shown in the graph, meaning these three letters included only that single theme. Safety

Relative to Current Water Supply is the most frequently occurring theme and there is

overlap among the Imported Water Contains Upstream Discharges, Safety Assurance,

and All Water is Recycled subcategories, which are displayed individually.

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Doing so illustrates the overlap of 3 letters across the Imported Water Contains Upstream

Discharges and Cost-Effective Relative to Alternatives categories. Two of the letters

assigned to the Support All Beneficial Reuse category are also assigned to Safety

Assurance.

Figure 27. Letters to the Editor: Category Web Graph for Support for IPR

With regard to ideographs and policy symbols, the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph occurs in 14 (58%) of the 24 letters. In 10 of these, the term is mentioned the moniker assigned by the Union-Tribune editorial board and other policy opponents (e.g., “People against this proposal called it toilet-to-tap”). In 6 of these letters, the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph is condemned as a nasty polarizing slogan, an inaccurate portrayal that supports “water-scare mongers” by continuing and reinforcing negative connotations.

Use of this misnomer, which “conjures up a disgusting image of drinking toilet water,” is argued to “generate heat but no light,” and letter writers criticize the Union-Tribune editorial board for their use of this “juvenile, gross-out debating technique.” However, in

294 the remaining 4 letters, “toilet-to-tap” is used casually, as if it were the generally accepted signification device for articulating indirect potable reuse. For example, one policy proponent placed it in parentheses so that readers know what was meant by reservoir augmentation. In these cases, it seems that the media’s use of “toilet-to-tap” has caused the term to become neutralized in that its meaning is more denotative than connotative for these “toilet-to-tap” supporters.

Opposite the Editorial Page Column.

The sample of 77 Opinion section items from the San Diego Union-Tribune included 12 Op-Ed column articles on the topic of water recycling and indirect potable reuse, printed from March 1995 through October 2008. Four (33%) were printed prior to the San Diego Mayor and City Council’s decision to abandon the “Water Repurification” project in 1999. One (8%) was published in the aftermath of that decision, but prior to the establishment of the 2001 Clean Water Task Force by Mayor Murphy and the City

Council in response to a civil action filed against the city by San Diego BayKeeper and the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation over sewage overflows. Four (33%) were printed during the settlement negotiations between the environmentalist groups and the city, which resulted in the city undertaking a year-long water reuse study on various uses of reclaimed wastewater, including reservoir augmentation (Balint, Nov. 20, 2003).

The remaining three (25%) were printed following the results of the rater reuse study, which led to the City Council’s decision to adopt the “NC-3 Strategy” of reservoir augmentation, and initiate an advanced tertiary-level water treatment demonstration

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project in preparation for a full-scale indirect potable reuse and reservoir augmentation

project.

The 12 Op-Ed articles were copied to a Microsoft Excel 2010 file, with each letter

occupying a separate cell under the variable name, body. The full article, rather than the

paragraph, was taken as a “response” unit for text analysis. In contrast to the editorials,

which comprise a singular viewpoint, the Op-Ed columns represent multiple points of view. By analyzing each article as response, the sample size is smaller but the frequencies of concepts, types and categories interpreted from the text more holistically represent the frame of the author.

The Excel file was imported into IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, and the initial cycle of text-link analysis, compilation, extraction, grouping and indexing was conducted using the Policy Position text analytic package developed during the analysis of letters to the editor. This consisted of the San Diego IPR case project library and the

Supports IPR and Opposes IPR libraries, which include types and descriptors coded

during the previous analysis. Following the initial extraction, these libraries were edited

to identify policy positions and supportive and oppositional policy arguments. As with

the Letters to the Editor, the initial extraction results were used as an index to code the

frames of support and opposition for the city of San Diego’s indirect potable reuse

project, including alternative policies, and ideographic policy symbols.

Of the 12 Op-Ed contributions, 9 (75%) expressed support for an indirect potable

reuse project and 3 (25%) expressed opposition. During the coding and editing stage of

the analysis categories were developed for descriptors expression support and opposition

296 to indirect potable reuse from the key concepts extracted from the text, with an effort to include ideographic policy symbols and other frame elements, such as metaphors, catchphrases, stereotypes, sources of information, moral appeals, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments (Entman, 1993;Gamson &

Lasch, 1983; Van Gorp, 2007). For this analysis, because there were only 8 contributors in total (4 articles were written by Robert Simmons, an attorney for the Sierra Club, and 2 were written by Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper), the sample is manageable enough to show the frames in the text according to each discourse participant within each category. That is, the categories, or frames, are treated as a grouping variable for the discourse participants, who will have membership in as many categories or frames as were coded from the text.

A total of 59 category descriptors were coded. There were 53 descriptors across 9 articles in support of water reuse, but only 6 descriptors across 3 articles for opposition.

This imbalance is largely due to the Op-Ed articles functioning as a counter-balance to the Union-Tribune editorial board’s opposition to the project. Separate categories were created for articles in support and opposition to the reservoir augmentation project. The distribution of Op-Ed articles (responses) and descriptor codes across categories and subcategories is shown in Figure 28.

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Figure 28. Op-Ed Column: Categories of Support and Opposition to Water Reuse

Support. Op-Ed articles written in support of indirect potable reuse were framed according to three main evaluative dimensions: economics, safety, and drought crisis.

The move past the moniker theme interpreted from the Letters to the Editor was also coded for three of the Op-Ed articles. Only one article (Reznik, 2007) mentions ocean pollution abatement as reason for promoting the reservoir augmentation project, although the reduction in ocean discharges was actually the very point of the lawsuit brought by

Reznik against the city of San Diego. The Water Reuse Study and the strategy of reservoir augmentation adopted by the City Council developed out of settlement negotiations during this suit. The following subsections describe in further detail the three main evaluative frames of support for indirect potable reuse.

Economics. Of the 9 Op-Ed articles written in support of indirect potable reuse, 8

(89%) drew upon a frame related to economics, with the one exception being the article

298 written by Harold Bailey, director of operations and water quality for the Padre Dam

Municipal Water District. The economics frame was coded as a superordinate category that included three kinds of economic frame subcategories coded from the text: cost effectiveness, water independence, and regional economy.

The cost-effectiveness frame includes 11 descriptors across 5 articles, in which water reclamation was said to be cost-effective relative to policy alternatives. Key concepts extracted under included [cost-effective], [more affordable],

[expensive], [ratepayer cost], [water cost], and [less money].

The water independence frame is also related to economics in that the reliance on imported water shifts control over water rates from the San Diego County Water

Authority to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. This frame included

5 descriptors across 4 articles, in which the key concepts, [guaranteed local-supply], [no outside interests], and [dependence] (including [reliance] and [depend] as synonyms) were coded from , which is a core library dictionary that extracts unspecified concepts for categorization.

The regional economy frame includes 8 coded descriptors across 5 articles, in which the writer connects the issue of water to the local economy. The key concept was

[economy], which was extracted under . In visually scanning the associated test, the expression “water is more precious than gold” was also coded to this category as a catch phrase that speaks to the value or importance of water. Notably, the idea of

“economic health,” with the writer using animation as a rhetorical framing device resonates as a cultural frame in which an economy is perceived as a living something,

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with its health dependent on water. This was interpreted from the statements “water is the lifeblood of our economy” (Roth, 1998); “water gives life to a regional economy,”

(Simmons, 1998), and “water to maintain the vitality of our communities and economy”

(Seidel, 2003). The Economics categories and descriptors are shown in Figure 29.

Figure 29. Op-Ed Column: Support for Water Reuse within an Economics Frame

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Drought or Crisis. Another frame common to supports relied on the concepts of

[drought] or [crisis], which was coded from 11 descriptors across 6 of the Op-Ed articles.

The central theme for this frame is simply that an indirect potable reuse program would hedge against drought, either real or impending. Figure 31 shows the coded descriptors manifest in the content of 5 discourse participants (two of the articles were written by

Robert Simmons).

Figure 30. Op-Ed Column: Water Reuse Support within a Drought Crisis Frame

Safety. The safety frame included 12 descriptors across 7 (78%) of the 9 Op-Ed articles written in support of the reservoir augmentation project. The two articles that didn’t include this frame were Reznik’s (2006) “Ensuring San Diego’s Water Future,” which was an ecological conservation polemic against dual purpose power and

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desalination plants that relied on once-through cooling, and Simmons’ (1998) “Increasing our Water Supply by Conserving,” which endorse reclamation, but focuses mainly on conservation. The root concepts, [safe], [clean], [health, drinking water], [success], and

[pure] were used indexically for coding categories. Simmons, who has a flair for imagery, compares the purity of the recycled water to the recycled water the Challenger

Astronauts were drinking. Although the core message of Simmons’ argument is that recycled water is safe to drink, it could be interpreted that he invokes a “Challenger

Astronaut” frame within which to make his point. That is, the reader would conceivably image a Challenger Astronaut and form mental linkages to state-of-the-art NASA technology. Reznik invokes the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph, but as a supporter and key negotiator in the revival of the project does not use the term pejoratively. Rather, this is rhetorical strategy to reappropriate the slogan and neutralize its negative connotation.

Figure 31. Op-Ed Column: Support for Water Reuse within a Safety Frame

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Opposition. Of the three Op-Ed articles written in opposition to water reuse, one

was written by Ron Roberts (2000), a member of the county Board of Supervisors, who in his argument for the privatizing the San Diego football stadium, includes the “toilet-to- tap program” as an example of “bad decision-making at City Hall.” Roberts uses the

“toilet-o-tap” ideograph and describes the project as “ill-conceived,” without further

detail. The other two articles include more detailed arguments. One was written by

David Schubert (2003), a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Schubert

doesn’t address the use of reclaimed water specifically for drinking, but warns against the

potential health hazards of using reclaimed for any purposes that involve human contact.

The other was written by John Christianson (1995), an economics instructor at San Diego

and member of Citizens Coordinate for Century 3. Christianson doesn’t question the

safety of an indirect potable reuse project, but argues the costs would not be “gentle on

the pocketbook.” His argument centers on the issue of project costs that would be higher

than that for desalination, and he highlights conservation incentives as the most

economical alternative. These other categories are shown in Figure 32.

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Figure 32. Op-Ed Column: Categories of Opposition to Water Reuse

Roberts’ use of the < “toilet-to-tap” > ideograph is consistent with that of other politicians who exploited the controversy as a campaign issue, or to criticize the incumbent City Council. However, Christianson and Schubert are both “experts,” and with the exception of Christianson’s use of the expression, “gentle on the pocketbook,” as

framing device to focus the reader on the economics of a reservoir augmentation project,

both argue against the project with dry facts and the near-mathematical plainness that would be characteristic of authentic discourse.

The San Diego Union-Tribune: News Articles and Features Stories.

Similar to the processes employed during the analysis of Opinion Section items,

the sample of 278 news articles, columns, and feature stories from the San Diego Union-

Tribune was retained as a Microsoft Excel file and imported to IBM SPSS Text Analytics

for Surveys for Frame Mapping. In this analysis, however, the aim is to identify the

actors and organizations that dominated the text, and then identify their policy positions

and expressed sentiment, and the ideographs and other policy symbols manifest in their

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quoted statements. Because the articles are of interest only as they relate to the key

actors and organizations in the narrative, the “response” unit is the paragraph, since the quoted statements of key actors and organizational representatives will most typically be within a single paragraph of text. In total, 6,855 paragraphs from 278 articles elated to

San Diego’s water reclamation and reuse programs, published from December 1984 through October 2010, were included in the analysis. Additional details on article selection and the frequency distribution of selected articles by year are provided in

Chapter III: Methods and Procedures.

Identification of Organizations and Groups.

This first section focuses on the identification of organizations from the corpus of articles, and includes categorical references to policy actors and stakeholder groups. It is

reasonable to assume that coalitions and citizen groups are more likely to be referred to

collectively when their institutional action frames (Schön & Rein, 1994) are in alignment,

simply for the sake of economy. For example, in the following excerpt, broad classes of

individuals and groups are identified categorically (e.g., “environmentalists,” “labor

leaders,” etc.), rather than being named individually in the text:

Environmentalists, labor leaders, business officials, taxpayer advocates, building managers and engineering professionals lent their combined support to an $11.8 million pilot project to turn wastewater into drinking water. (Lee, Jan. 27, 2010, p.B1).

This level of economy is possible because the focus is on the frame alignment (Snow et

al., 1986) of their institutional action frames. In contrast, the frames of public officials

and even high-ranking public administrators are more often interpreted as the policy

frames (Schön & Rein, 1994) of these individuals, rather than institutional action frames,

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as with this excerpt citing David Schlesinger’s explanation of why the Water

Repurification Project of the late 1990s would have distributed recycled water to San

Diego’s less affluent, largely minority communities:

David Schlesinger, director of the city’s Metropolitan Wastewater Department, said the decision on who gets the repurified sewage water was based solely on the size of the city’s reservoirs. (Balint, Dec. 7, 1997, p.A19)

However, when the policy frames of individuals become institutional action frames,

collective references are made, just with other organizations, to provide economy in

signification. For example, in the following excerpt, “water officials,” is used to express

an institutional action frame, rather than the policy frame of an individual actor:

Water officials hope someday to use treated sewage water to supplement San Diego’s supply of drinking water. (Balint, July 23, 1985, p.B1)

For this reason, the identification of named organizations and collective references to

classes of individuals (e.g., “environmentalists,” “taxpayer advocates,” “water officials,”

etc.) is undertaken as a preliminary step to provide insight regarding the imprint of power of these groups in Union-Tribune news articles and feature stories, with the subsequent identification of individual policy actors, as frame entrepreneurs, as a second stage of the analysis.

Figure 33 shows that 234 paragraphs (n), just over 3% of the 6,855 total paragraphs in the corpus, were coded as including one or more named community groups or a categorical reference to such groups. These included 14 named environmentalist and conservationist groups (nresponses = 85), with the Sierra Club (nresponses = 40), Surfrider

Foundation (nresponses = 25), and San Diego Coastkeeper, formerly, BayKeeper, which is

coded as a synonym (nresponses = 23), occurring most frequently. These are high-profile

306 groups that are named because of their involvement as an intervenor or plaintiff in litigation against the City of San Diego (i.e., USA v. City of San Diego, 1991; BayKeeper v. City of San Diego, 2000). There were also 59 paragraphs with categorical references to environmentalists (nresponses = 53) and conservationists (nresponses = 6). Eleven named planning, business interests, and economic development groups were identified from the text, with the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce (nresponses = 21) being the most frequently mentioned. Six paragraphs referenced these groups categorically (e.g.,

[business groups]). There were also 6 named citizens’ watchdog groups (nresponses = 84), with the San Diego Grand Jury (nresponses = 70) occurring most frequently.

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Figure 33. News Articles: Community Groups

In addition to community groups, Figure 34 shows 13 named Research

Institutions and Professionals’ Groups were extracted from 67 paragraphs, with San

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Diego State University (nresponses = 16) and University of California (nresponses = 14) as the

most frequently occurring research institutions, and the San Diego County Medical

Society (nresponses = 8) as the most frequently occurring professionals’ group. Research

Institutions and Professionals’ Groups were developed as subcategories under a single umbrella category to collectively represent experts from scientific, medical, and engineering communities.

Figure 34. News Articles: Research Institutions and Professional Groups

For comparison purposes, extracted concepts signifying San Diego county- and

city government are categorized using 12 descriptors (i.e., coding rules) to create the

Local Government category, assigned to 1,255 (18%) of the of the 6,855 total paragraphs

in the corpus. As shown in Figure 35, this includes subcategories for City Government

(nresponses = 874) and County Government (nresponses = 395). City Government includes

subcategories of City Leaders (nresponses = 657) and Public Utilities (nresponses = 229).

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Figure 35. News Articles: Local Government Entities

Within City Leaders, the [city council] (nresponses = 432) and mayor (nresponses =

128) were most frequently occurring in the text, followed by categorical references to

[city officials] and [city leaders] (nresponses = 83). The concept, [*the council*] (nresponses =

124) was coded as synonymous with [*city council*] (nresponses = 332) since visual

comparisons of the concept and text suggested consistent usage in the context of the case,

as for example:

The council took it up anyway and in January effectively killed it by refusing to budget the $15 million needed this year to keep research and construction plans going on toilet-to-tap. (Huard, May 19, 1999, p.B4)

Within Public Utilities, there are more paragraphs with references to the public utilities

departments (nresponses = 137) than [*water officials*] (nresponses = 95). And within County

Government there are more paragraphs with references to water districts (nresponses = 249)

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than the San Diego County Water Authority (nresponses = 170). But, comparatively,

including the research institutions and professional associations, there were 303

paragraphs with references to experts and various stakeholder groups, which is about a

quarter of the media space with references to city and county government (nresponses =

1,255). This suggests power is imprinted more by government officials, and particularly

by elected officials, than by community groups and policy experts in the Union Tribune’s narrative over the history of the case.

Identification of Named Persons.

The dictionary, which contains rules for extracting named persons from the text, was used to identify the actors whose names most frequently occurred. In addition to implementation of an upper-case algorithm to improve accuracy in identifying proper nouns, text link and synonym rules were coded to identify the role and organizational affiliation of the most frequently occurring actors. These were defined in the local case project library under the type, . That is, the rules provided in the utility’s Core dictionary for identifying named persons were overwritten and expanded for the purpose of the case study during the coding and editing stage of the analysis. In total, 2,033 named persons were extracted from 6,855 paragraphs of text, although 1,136 (56%) of these paragraphs were accounted for by just 71 named persons

(i.e., 3.5% of all named persons). Figure 36 shows the distribution of named persons across researcher-defined categories, under the superordinate category of Frame

Entrepreneurs, to suggest that these are individuals who, through quoted statements, have the opportunity to frame the discourse.

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Figure 36. News Articles: Categories of Named Persons

City Council Members. The largest category was City Council Members, which was comprised of 19 council members mentioned across 313 paragraphs. The most frequently named council members were Ron Roberts (nresponses = 45), Bruce Henderson

(nresponses = 43), George Stevens (nresponses = 38), Juan Vargas (nresponses = 34), Donna Frye

(nresponses = 25), Valerie Stallings (nresponses = 22), and Jim Madaffer (nresponses = 20). The distribution of the council members identified in the text is shown in Figure 37.

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Figure 37. News Articles: City Council Members

Public Administrators. The next largest category was Public Administrators, which was comprised of 22 government officials mentioned across 302 paragraphs of text. The most frequently named public administrators were David Schlesinger, director of the city metropolitan water department (nresponses = 60), Mark Watton, general manager

of the Otay Water District (nresponses = 57), Paul Gagliardo, manager of the Repurification

Project (nresponses = 41), and Peter MacLaggan, water reclamation director for the San

Diego County Water Authority (nresponses = 23). The distribution of the council members

identified in the text is shown in Figure 38.

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Figure 38. News Articles: Public Administrators

Mayor. The next most frequently occurring category was Mayor, with four city of

San Diego mayors mentioned across 224 paragraphs of text. Jerry Sanders, the

incumbent mayor since 2005 was the most frequently mentioned (nresponses = 137),

followed by Susan Golding, who was mayor from 1992 -2000 (nresponses = 84), and then

Dick Murphy, who was mayor from 2000-2005 (nresponses = 5), and Maureen O’Connor,

who was mayor from 1985-1992 (nresponses = 5). Individually, Sanders and Golding are

the two most frequently named persons in the text.

Representatives of Citizens Groups. Eleven individuals representing citizens groups were identified across 131 paragraphs of text. The most frequently named person was Robert Simmons (nresponses = 35), a retired law professor who represented the Sierra

Club as an intervenor in the U.S. EPA’s lawsuit against the city of San Diego. The

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second-most frequently mentioned person in this category was Mark Mazzarella (nresponses

= 24), an attorney for the association of concerned taxpayers. Mazzarella had sued the

city of San Diego for having run a “stealth program” to move the reservoir augmentation

program forward after it had been cancelled (Stetz, 2005, p.B1). Bruce Reznik (nresponses

=18), executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper, and Marco Gonzalez (nresponses = 14), attorney for both Coastkeeper and the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, are also frequently mentioned. Others are shown in Figure 39.

Figure 39. News Articles: Representatives of Citizens’ Groups

Others represented in the text. San Diego’s City Attorney, Mike Aguirre

(nresponses = 80) is the third most frequently mentioned individual. Aguirre was a strong supporter of the reservoir augmentation project, and much of the coverage involves the

policy feud between him and Mayor Sanders. There were also 8 named experts identified

over 61 paragraphs. The two most frequently named experts were Daniel A Okun, a

retired environmental engineering professor (nresponses = 22) and David Schubert, a

scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. And, California state assembly

members, Steve Peace (nresponses = 47) and Howard Wayne (nresponses = 26) were among the

315 most frequently mentioned individuals in the text. These and other individuals frequently mentioned are shown in Figure 40.

Figure 40. News Articles: Other Frequently Named Persons in the Text

Proportionately, the11 named citizen group representatives account for just over

6% (nresponses = 131) of total frequency of name mentions for these 71 individuals

(nresponses = 1,136), whereas the 28 elected officials account for 63% (nresponses = 709), and the 23 named public mangers account for 28% (nresponses = 317). Accordingly, when discussing the frame of a text as an imprint of power (Entman, 1993), there appears to be an imbalance between citizens and government—at least insofar as the policy frames of elected officials and high-ranking administrators are imprinted in the text with proportionately greater frequencies.

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Frames of Support and Opposition to Indirect Potable Reuse.

The list of named individuals identified and categorized in the previous section

was used indexically to identify their expressed policy positions and sentiment toward the

indirect potable reuse project. For this analysis, a hierarchical binning process was

employed in which separate types were created for each of the originators of the

arguments identified from the analysis in the previous section. For example, in the

previous section, [Mayor Jerry Sanders] and [City Attorney Mike Aguirre] were extracted from the text as a concept, along with all other persons identified from the text using the named-entity rules and codes in the type dictionary. In this analysis, separate types are created for , and each of the other identified persons, with their arguments in favor or opposition to indirect potable reuse coded as concepts and binned accordingly. Hierarchical categories were then coded according policy position (level 1), the thematic frame of the policy argument

(level 2) and any subtheme categories (level 3, if any), the discourse participation category represented by the individual making the argument (i.e., elected official, public administrator, expert, or community group) (level 3 or 4), and the named person making the statement (level 4 or 5), under which the coded arguments are assigned. The categories for thematic frames are not mutually exclusive, meaning that a coded statement, and, by inheritance, its originator and the discourse participation group represented, can be assigned to as many frame categories as are thematically represented in the argument (e.g., the statement, “Mayor Sanders insists the project is divisive and

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expensive,” is coded to the thematic frame categories of opposition, divisive and

expensive).

The number of paragraphs specific to arguments in support or opposition to the indirect potable reuse project was scant relative to size of the corpus. Only 112

paragraphs (less than 2% of the total 6,855 paragraphs in the corpus) were identified as

including such data. Of these, 56 (50%) included arguments in opposition of the indirect potable reuse project, and 56 (50%) included reasons in support. This balance is indicative of the generic “conflict frame” across this subset of news articles, in which the journalist emphasizes contention among policy antagonists to gain reader interest

(Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000; also cited in Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p.262). The thematic frames that were coded from the text and their corresponding frequency of occurrence (in paragraphs) are shown in Figure 41.

Figure 41. News Articles: Categories of Support and Opposition to IPR

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Opposition. Notably, of the 24 (43%) of the 56 paragraphs coded to the Opposes

IPR category included an Economics frame, 23 of which included arguments that the

project was too costly, and 2 included arguments that the project would bring unintended

consequences. Elected officials accounted for 15 (65%) of the 23 paragraphs coded as

expressing the theme that the project was expensive. The elected officials and coded

statements are shown in Figure 42.

Figure 42. News Articles: Elected Officials that Argue IPR is Too Expensive

In addition, concerns over costs were expressed by Ron Kole, spokesperson for the city’s Metropolitan Wastewater Department, Elmer Keen, a professor at San Diego

State University and member of the city’s advisory panel on wastewater issues, and Mark

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Mazzarella, an attorney for the Association of Concerned Taxpayers. Keen and State

Senator Steve Peace also raised the issue of unintended economic consequences. Keen argued that “the repurification process would generate more sludge, produce more truck traffic and use more energy” (Balint, July 6, 1997, p.B1). Peace argued it would have a negative impact on San Diego’s tourist industry. The discourse participants and their coded statements are shown in Figure 43.

Figure 43. News Articles: Other “Cost” Arguments Against IPR

The next most frequent category of opposition was the theme that the raw water effluent derived through an indirect potable reuse reservoir augmentation project would be unsafe. Eighteen paragraphs were coded to this category, representing four elected officials, two policy experts, and two community groups. The under the overarching

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theme that the project is unsafe, are subtheme of experimentation, indicated by concepts

like [experiment], [test case], [guinea pigs], and [Franken-water], and the subtheme of drinking toilet water, as in “I’m not drinking from some else’s toilet,” and “to use toilet water for drinking doesn’t make sense,” which is subsumed under Unsafe in this categorization. Other coded statements are shown in Figure 44.

Figure 44. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Unsafe

The next most frequently identified theme was that the reservoir augmentation project was politically contentious or divisive. Thirteen paragraphs included statements

321 that were coded to this category, which includes the idea that the program was so unpopular that the city government had to pursue it as a “stealth program” to avoid public opposition, an accusation levied by Mark Mazzarella, attorney for the Association of

Concerned Taxpayers, who sued the city of San Diego based on this claim. Other coded statements are associated with elected officials, whose opposition to the reservoir augmentation program was based, in part, on opinion polls sponsored by the San Diego

County Water District that showed low levels of acceptability among residents (e.g.,

Jiménez, 2004). The coded statements and discourse participants are shown in Figure 45.

Figure 45. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Politically Contentious

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The last thematic category of oppositional frames is IPR Alternatives, which include policy alternatives to indirect potable reuse, mainly nonpotable reuse, as outlined in the “North City 1” (NC-1) strategy of the Water Reuse Study, which was to expand the purple pipe network for irrigation, without treating the effluent to drinking water standards and taking it to a reservoir (Lee, July 27, 2006). The other subcategory is

Desalination and Importation, which was an alternative favored by Mayor Sanders.

Coded statements are shown in Figure 46.

Figure 46. News Articles: Arguments for IPR Policy Alternatives

Support. Twenty-five (45%) of the 56 paragraphs with statements coded in support of the indirect potable reuse project were coded to the frame category, Safe, with overarching theme that effluent produced would be at least as safe as the current raw water supply. Coded statements include the idea that all water is recycled, or that the

323 water imported from the Colorado River contains upstream sewage discharges, as was reviewed in the analysis of the Opinion section of the Union-Tribune. Coded statements are shown in Figure 47.

Figure 47. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Safe

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Twelve (21%) of the 56 paragraphs with statements in support of indirect potable

reuse were coded to the Cost-Effective category. These included statements indicating

that the project was feasible or do-able; made economic sense; would hedge against future prices; would be less expensive than policy alternatives, such as expanding the purple pipe network for nonpotable reuse; or was less expensive than policy opponents suggested (e.g., Lani Lutar’s statements), Coded statements are shown in Figure 48.

Figure 48. News Articles: Arguments that IPR is Cost-Effective

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Eight (14%) of the 56 paragraphs with statements in support of indirect potable

reuse were coded to the Environmental Protection category. These included appeals

from an environmentalist perspective to reduce ocean outfall of wastewater effluent or

implement reservoir augmentation as an alternative to adverse environmental impact on

marine systems associated with desalination, and, from a city attorney’s perspective,

avoid lawsuits from environmentalists over the adequacy of advanced primary treatment

at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. In fact, as discussed in Chapter IV, the

City Council’s decision to fund the 2006 Water Reuse Study was part of its legal

settlement with the Bay Council over sewage overflows, meaning that BayKeeper v. City

of San Diego (2000) was the impetus for the City Council’s decision to approve the

Reservoir Augmentation pilot project. Coded statements referring to Environmental

Protection are shown in Figure 49.

Figure 49. News Articles: Arguments that IPR Helps to Protect the Environment

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In addition, 12 (27%) of the 56 paragraphs in support of indirect potable reuse were coded to the thematic category of Self-reliance, and 3 (5%) were coded to Support - all other. The Self-reliance category includes arguments that the primary benefit of the reservoir augmentation project would be to increase local water supplies as a means of reducing San Diego’s dependence on imported water. The Support - all other category includes general expressions of support from City Council members. Coded statements are shown in Figure 50.

Figure 50. News Articles: Arguments that IPR Increases Self-reliance

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In summary, there are relatively few supportive or oppositional arguments made

in the text of the news articles that are attributable to specific individuals. There are a

few politicians who are outspoken on the issue, and particularly during election

campaigns, and only a handful of experts and community groups have their policy and

institutional action frames reflected in the Union-Tribune news articles, although this is

augmented by contributions in the Opinion section of the newspaper, with Letters to the

Editor and the Op-Ed column, as was analyzed earlier in this chapter.

Ideographs. There are several key ideographs and policy symbols identified in these coded statements, and throughout the 6,855 paragraphs of the corpus that were part of the frame of the text, but would be attributed to journalist rather than a particular policy actor in the journalist’s narrative. For example, the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph, which appears in 171 paragraphs of text, and is at times used pejoratively as a rhetorical frame by reservoir augmentation policy opponents, but is also used by journalists in describing the reservoir augmentation program. To reduce the amount of noise (i.e., false positive results), the category web graph in Figure 51 includes only cases with overlap between the named person and on three or more paragraphs. This works.

With the exception of and City Attorney Mike Aguirre, and Bruce Reznik of

Coastkeeper, who refers to the reservoir augmentation project as “toilet-to-tap,” but without a pejorative connotation, the policy actors identified in the web graph are all policy opponents. That is, by creating categories from the type, each of the named persons can be mapped against toilet-to-tap, and overlap on three or more

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paragraphs (i.e., the paragraph includes both the person’s name and “toilet-to-tap”)

provides a good gauge of the significant policy opponents in the narrative.

Figure 51. News Articles: Category Web Graph of by Person

The exception of Bruce Reznik is verified by examining the category overlap between him, and other concepts referring to indirect potable reuse. As shown in Figure

52, Reznik also refers to the project as indirect potable reuse, repurification, and reservoir augmentation. His use of “toilet-to-tap” is intended to naturalize the concept and deprive it of its negative connotation.

Figure 52. News Articles: Category Web Graph of by Bruce Reznik

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Chapter Review and Summary of Findings

IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys provides a means of extracting and categorizing concepts of interest from unstructured textual data, and for identifying relationships among concept categories. For the purpose of this dissertation, IBM SPSS

Text Analytics for Surveys was applied to provide separate analyses for 77 San Diego

Union-Tribune Opinion section articles, with separate subgroup analyses for Letters to

the Editor (n = 44), Editorials (n = 19), and Op-Ed columns (n = 12), and for 278 news

articles and stories items, mainly from the News, Local, and Zone sections of the paper.

In these analyses, newspaper items, as historical, observational data, were treated as if

they represented responses to a questionnaire. Admittedly, there are text analytic

products specifically designed for processing unstructured data, including the IBM SPSS

Modeler data mining workbench, but given the trade-offs of cost relative to performance

and function, IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys was well suited for this task.

Newspaper items were queried to answer the questions of:

• Who are the key actors and organizations represented in the discourse?

• What are their policy positions?

• What policy symbols or ideographs are used to support these policy positions?

• What frames do these policy symbols or ideographs represent; that is, what

frames undergird or are used to support their arguments policy positions?

• With what other actors or organizations are they in frame alignment?

The following provides a discussion in answer to the above questions, and my personal

evaluative assessment regarding the utility value of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for

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Surveys in each of its applications for the analysis of Opinion section editorials, letters to the editor, and Op-Ed columns, and news articles and stories printed mainly in the News,

Local, and Zone sections of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Analysis of Discourse Participants from Opinion Items

In the first application, IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys was used to identify and categorize discourse participants from the letters to the editor and Op-Ed column of the San Diego Union-Tribune, according to their organizational affiliations and roles, and to subsequently identify the relationships among the categories. This analysis was conducted to organize the data and show the relationships between categories in answer to the question of which key actors and organizations were represented in the discourse.

There were, in total, 22 items where the writer’s identity, as presented in the

Union-Tribune, was linked to one or more organizations and roles. In other cases, the writer was identified as an Area Resident for having their persona framed by their area of residence (e.g., Connie Dahl, San Diego). Writers whose persona was framed by their organizational affiliations and roles were categorized as Experts, Executives, Group

Members and Board Members affiliated with Health-Focused Organizations, The San

Diego Union Tribune, Environmentalists, Civic Groups, Public Administration, and

Business interests. An interesting finding was that, based on the Actor Role concept definitions (Figure 12), there were two distinct clusters of related actor roles, with

Executives and Board Members in one, and Experts and Group Members in the other.

The Executives and Board Members were high ranking public administrators, elected

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officials, and private industry executives, whereas the Experts and Citizen Group

Members were professors, engineers, consultants, and individuals whose professional and economic interests were aligned with their group affiliations.

A key distinction between the Executives and Board Members cluster and the

cluster of Experts and Group Members (Figure 13) seems to be the lack of institutional

administrative or decision-making authority on the part of experts, at least according to

how the concepts that defined their organizational roles were categorized (Figure 12).

That is, individuals who are identified as professors, engineers, and consultants might

serve on an advisory committee and provide recommendations to board members and

executives with decision-making power. A similar schism is also suggested by the link

between the Executives and Board Members cluster and the Public Administration

organization subcategory (Figure 13).

In this application, IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys has some value as a

workbench in terms of facilitating categorization and providing visualization graphics.

However, these could have been similarly achieved using other applications since the

analysis was basically a small n coding exercise. The results could have been presented

in a cross-tabulation table, which is used as the basis for the category web graph, or

presented graphically in a tree graph to show the overlap across categories.

Analysis of Union-Tribune Editorials.

In the second application of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys, the subset of

19 San Diego Union-Tribune editorials was analyzed, with the paragraph as the unit of

analysis. This decision to analyze paragraphs rather than complete editorials was based

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on the assumption that the editorials represented a monological discourse, representing

the viewpoint of a single entity, that of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board. In

this analysis, the individuals and organizations most frequently identified in the text of

the editorials, which were extracted a concepts, included the City Council, ratepayers,

Mayor Jerry Sanders, San Diegans, environmentalists, the U.S. EPA, City Attorney Mike

Aguirre, the National Research Council, and San Diego BayKeeper (now Coastkeeper).

The City Council, city attorney, and environmentalists, most notably, San Diego

BayKeeper, are aligned in favor of the indirect potable reuse reservoir augmentation project, which is also supported by the U.S. EPA because it would ensure the city’s compliance with Clean Water Act regulations regarding point source sewage discharges.

The Union-Tribune editorial board is aligned with the Mayor against it at each stage of the projects development, beginning with the city’s capitulation to environmentalists in funding the Water Reuse Study, and then in the adoption of the study’s strategy for indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation. This oppositional discourse was well-

reasoned, mainly on the basis of its cost, which would be passed on to water and sewer

service ratepayers. To a lesser extent, editorial board argued against the project on the

basis of its risk to public health.

In making these arguments, the Union-Tribune editorial board employed highly

ideographic discourse in its pejorative use of “toilet-to-tap” as a metaphor or policy

slogan to describe the Water Purification Demonstration Project, as it is now called, and

other figurative expressions, such as “turn sewage water into drinking water,” and “dump

treated sewage water into the San Vicente Reservoir.” These descriptions inaccurately,

333 or, at the very least, incompletely describe the treatment processes, and were deliberately used to invoke similar “drinking sewage” imagery. “Toilet-to-tap” is also typically coupled with negative descriptors that frame the project as being distasteful, unpopular or poorly conceived. Examples include “odiousness,” “widely reviled,” “infamous,”

“wildly unpopular,” “notorious,” and “mindless.” The National Research Council is mentioned in four editorials for its 1998 study, which warned that indirect potable reuse should be an “option of last resort” due to potential health risks. Based on its repeated occurrence, I would also interpret “option of last resort,” as an ideographic policy slogan that is linked to the Union-Tribune editorial board’s opposition to the policy.

In this application, I would conclude that IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys was successfully applied. Concepts representing people, organizations, and opinion statements, such as those identified in the previous paragraph, were extracted from the text and typed using the Opinions library. The data visualization tools, and, in particular, the category web graph, showed which concepts most frequently occurred in the text and the relationships in terms of overlap between concepts. The resulting category web graph

(Figure 17) shows (and, in my opinion, quite impressively) the frame of the Union-

Tribune editorial board’s discourse in terms of concepts and sentiment. That is, if one wanted to reduce 165 paragraphs of text into one image map of the recurring elements that framed the Union-Tribune editorial board’s discourse, IBM SPSS Text Analytics for

Surveys provides this capability.

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Analysis of Letters to the Editor.

The third application of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys involved an analysis of 44 letters to the editor that were printed in the Opinion section of the San

Diego Union-Tribune. Most were written by individuals identified, generically, as Area

Residents. However, there were some exceptions: Three letters were written by Milton

N. Burgess, a professional engineer and construction consultant; two were written by

Marsi A. Steirer, deputy director of the city of San Diego Water Department, and director of the Water Reuse Study; one was written by Larry Breitfelder, an Otay Water District board member; one was written by Glen Schmidt, member of American Society of

Landscape Architects in San Diego; one was written by Gabriel Solmer, interim executive director for San Diego Coastkeeper; and one was written by Bruce Henderson, former San Diego City Council member and past president of the American Taxpayers

Association. In the cases of professional engineers, construction consultants, landscape architects, and public administrators, which supported the indirect potable reuse reservoir augmentation project, their support is linked to professional and economic motivations.

For environmentalists, support is linked to a values commitment toward pollution abatement and conservation, and as an alternative to ocean water desalination, which is perceived as having a harmful environmental impact, and would also lead to population growth. For Henderson, opposition was based on costs and health risks. Breitfelder

(2005) wrote that the idea of “drinking recycled sweater water…unacceptably distasteful and totally unnecessary” (p.B9), but, as an Otay Water District Board Member, has a professional interest in preventing the project. The Otay Water District was a purchaser

335 of reclaimed water treated to irrigation standards, and had invested in a substantial

“purple pipe” network for such purposes.

The coding exercise in this application involved binning letters according to whether they supported or opposed the idea of indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation and the reasons given, if any, for the policy positions taken. Opposition to the idea of indirect potable reuse was based on cost considerations, distrust in government to competently administer such a project, health risks, psychological barriers

(i.e., the “yuck factor”), the notion that the water supply shortage was exaggerated, and support for policy alternatives, including nonpotable reuse (e.g., irrigation and industrial uses), conservation, and population growth management.

Support was mainly related to safety, with assurances given based on the technology, and the ideas that, regardless, all water is recycled, eventually, and that the raw water imported from the Colorado River already contains upstream sewage discharges. There were a few arguments that reservoir augmentation would be cost- effect relative to policy alternatives, such as nonpotable reuse, and that developing a local water supply would be a good disaster readiness measure, in case the supply lines were cut-off due to an earthquake. About a fifth of those supporting indirect potable reuse criticized policy opponents (the “water-scare mongers”) for using the “toilet-to-tap” policy slogan as a “juvenile, gross-out debating technique.” However, there were a few letters were “toilet-to-tap” was used by supporters to describe the program. Such usage was completely devoid of any negative connotation, and intended as a denotative signification device that readers would quickly grasp.

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My assessment of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys in this application is

that it provided a competent workbench for this type analysis, which involved thematic

coding and categorization. Concepts suggestive of a thematic category membership were

extracted to semantically related groups using natural language processing and

dictionaries with synonym rules, and then categorized thematically (e.g.,

concepts included [rain barrels] and [mandatory rationing]). Even though this was a

small n analysis, the number of different thematic categories that were coded, and their

interrelatedness, would have been difficult to show in a contingency table. For this, the

category web graphs (Figures 23 and 27) were beneficial in visually displaying the

thematic frames of the policy arguments.

Analysis of Op-Ed Columns.

In the fourth application, 12 Op-Ed columns were analyzed. These included

invited columns written by Robert Simmons, a retired professor of law at University of

San Diego, and longtime water reclamation advocate who served as a member of the

California Water Reuse Foundation’s advisory committee; Bruce Reznik, executive

director of San Diego Coastkeeper a nonprofit agency of the International Waterkeeper

Alliance that seeks to protect the region’s bays, beaches, watersheds and ocean; Andy

Seidel, chief executive officer of the Palm Desert-based USFilter, a water treatment and water technology company; David Schubert, a professor at the Salk Institute for

Biological Studies; Duane J. Roth, president and chief executive officer of Alliance

Pharmaceutical Corporation, vice-chair of the San Diego Regional Economic

Development Corporation and a board member and past president of BIOCOM San

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Diego; Harold Bailey, director of operations and water quality for the Padre Dam

Municipal Water District; John C. O’Neill, chairman of the board of the San Diego

Taxpayers Association; John Christianson, an economics instructor at San Diego and

member of Citizens Coordinate for Century 3; Ron Roberts, a member of the county

Board of Supervisors.

Similar to the analysis of letters to the editor, the Op-Ed columns were coded as being in support of or opposition to indirect potable reuse according to the thematic categories that framed their argument. Of the twelve, Schubert, Christianson, and

Roberts were the policy opponents. Schubert and Christianson are both subject matter experts, and their contributions, which contain dry, rational arguments with little use of figurative language, were printed in the 1990s during the Water Purification Project controversy. Christianson’s argument against the project was based on costs; Schubert warned against the health risks of reclaimed water; Roberts, a politician, included the “ill- conceived toilet-to-tap program” among several grievances with San Diego’s city government during the 2000 election.

The other nine columns were printed as a counterbalance to Union-Tribune editorials written in opposition to the project, creating “conflict frame” for the reader’s interest (e.g., as described in Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p.262). Support for the reservoir augmentation project was mainly argued in terms of its safety and also within an economics framework, with cost-effectiveness, regional economic development and sustainability, and water independence to hedge against the costs of imported water as primary considerations. Two-thirds of supporters also argued the project would offer

338 some protection during a drought crisis. Supporters generally made arguments that addressed several possible benefits that the reservoir augmentation project would provide. Three of the supporters included criticism towards the Union-Tribune editorial board and other policy opponents for their use of the “toilet-to-tap” slogan. The discourse, excepting that of Roberts, includes reasoned arguments characteristic of a discursive democracy. Notably, several metaphorical expressions related water to the idea of a “living economy,” such as with “water is the lifeblood of our economy” (Roth,

1998); “water gives life to a regional economy,” (Simmons, 1998), and “water to maintain the vitality of our communities and economy” (Seidel, 2003). These are metacultural metaphors suggestive of a broad cultural frame.

My assessment of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys in this application is the same as with the last. This software provides a competent workbench for thematic coding and categorization, where the semantically related concepts that suggest a thematic category are extracted and grouped together using natural language processing and dictionaries with synonym rules that facilitate thematic coding (i.e., categorization).

In this small n analysis, thematically coded statements were linked with their originator by coding them to subcategories. This was a workable approach to showing the thematic category of the argument, discourse participants who expressed that theme, and the coded statements expressed by the discourse participants (Figures 29 - 32).

Analysis of New Articles and Stories.

In three of the four preceding applications of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for

Surveys to items from the Opinion section of the Union-Tribune, the writer of the article

339 or letter was categorized according to their “person frame.” The exception was with the analysis of Union-Tribune editorials, in which terms indicating people and organizations were extracted, indexed and assigned to types using natural language processing rules, including text-link analysis algorithms and dictionary codes. This method becomes the basis for the fifth application, in which IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys is applied to identify actors and organizations from 278 Union-Tribune news articles and stories, with paragraphs serving as the unit of analysis, and then link them to their expressed sentiment and policy arguments. This large n analysis (n = 6855) best showcases the utility of IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys as an efficient means of extracting named entities from a large corpus of text, which included 2,033 paragraphs where named persons were extracted, 1,136 (56%) of which were accounted by just 71 named persons. Organizations were subsequently categorized as Local Government, Community

Groups, and Research Institutions and Professional Groups.

The text-link rules proved powerful enough to combine person-names with other descriptors for the purpose of categorization, and this was accomplished for the 71 persons identified from 1,136 paragraphs of text. These were mostly references to public officials, such as public administrators, City Council members, the city’s mayor, the city attorney, and state assembly members. To a lesser extent, representatives of citizen groups, subject matter experts, and individuals representing commercial interests were represented. From these data, it seems that the narratives related to the issue of indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation are news stories about local government that center on city leaders, notably, the City Council, the Mayor, the city attorney, and high

340 ranking public utilities and water district officials, as distinct individuals who are frequently recurring characters in these stories. To a considerably lesser extent, representatives of community groups are included as recurring characters. However, there is also great variation in distinct names for the everyday San Diegan, who, either in support or opposition to the policy, is included as a typical character that is represented in throughout the discourses related to indirect potable reuse.

There are a few distinct individuals whose names frequently recur, who might be considered “frame entrepreneurs,” in that they have media space in the San Diego Union-

Tribune as a vehicle to communicate their policy and rhetorical frames. In particular,

Mayor Susan Golding; City Council members, Bruce Henderson, George Stevens, and

Juan Vargas; State Senators, Steve Peace and Howard Wayne; and science experts,

Daniel Okun and Dave Schubert, argued against the Water Repurification Project (1993 –

1999). Supporters of this project included the City Council and water officials, David

Schlesinger and Paul Gagliardo, and retired law professor and attorney for the Sierra

Club, Robert Simmons. A few years after the Water Repurification Project was defeated, the issue of indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation was back on the city’s policy agenda, when it became part of the city’s legal settlement negotiations with environmentalists. During this period, Mayor Jerry Sanders and some citizen taxpayer groups were featured in policy opposition to City Attorney Mike Aguirre, environmentalists, Bruce Reznik and Marco Gonzalez, and a coalition of other supporters.

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Similar to the analyses conducted for the letters to the editor and Op-Ed columns, thematic categories coded for various types of supportive and opposing policy arguments.

Within each, subcategories for policy actors were created. These included elected officials, public administrators, experts, and community groups. Categories were created for frequently recurring named individuals by categorizing using the concept co-occurrence category building technique by frequency. The thematically coded statements were then categorized according to the associated named person.

Opposition to the project was mainly based on costs and safety. The key arguments were that indirect potable reuse was expensive relative to policy alternatives, and that the treatment process was untested and posed an unnecessary health risk. There were also arguments favoring policy alternatives, mainly nonpotable reuse via a purple pipe network; and arguments that the proposed policy was too politically contentious to be implemented. Supporters made the arguments that indirect potable reuse was a cost- effective solution to maximizing reuse of reclaimed water; that it protected the environment by reducing ocean discharges; that years of testing had shown the treated water would be safe as a raw water source, or at least it was as safe as the imported water from the Colorado River; and that having a local water supply provided some self- reliance or water independence that would protect against price increases, earthquakes, and drought.

There are several ideographs and policy symbols identified in these coded statements, and across the 6,855 paragraphs that were included as part of the frame of the text. In many cases, these are attributable to the journalist and not the policy actor as a

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character in the journalist’s narrative. The example of the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph, which appears in 171 paragraphs of text, is used pejoratively by policy opponents, but more often as a journalist’s hyperbolic signification device to draw the reader’s attention.

A neat finding was that by creating a category web graph from the category overlap between categories created from and , and limiting the results to overlap on three or more paragraphs, all of the significant policy opponents and two recurring supporters, City Attorney Mike Aguirre, and Bruce Reznik of Coastkeeper, who refer to the reservoir augmentation project as “toilet-to-tap” without a pejorative connotation, are displayed (Figure 51). This showcases the efficacy and power of SPSS

Text Analytics for Surveys in linking named entities to policy slogans and ideographic expressions.

Limitations of Frame Mapping.

Although the aim of Frame Mapping, as an interpretive-resolutive mode of analysis, is to reduce the data into its ontological structure, I don’t see this as having an advantage over the interpretive historical mode of the case narrative in terms of understanding public policy. The case narrative, as a loosely guided interpretive- historical approach, involves a retelling of a policy story that allows for a better understanding of the policy’s context, including the time, place, people and institutions that comprise the policy arena; the various facets of the issues under contestation; and the external factors that guide the policy’s trajectory. I believe, in that sense, the case narrative succeeds and has strengths beyond frame mapping as an interpretive-resolutive mode of analysis. Although the Frame Mapping may provide a tool for data management

343 and summarization, the results of such analyses can be interpreted indexically, as signs that point to phenomena of particular interest where inquiry of the details of the interactions are best assessed through historical review.

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CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This chapter is divided into six sections. In these discussions I wish to be clear that I’m not making any sweeping claims toward universals or suggesting the implications of my findings are extensive. Rather, I believe the research strategies I’ve applied in this dissertation are applicable only to studies where an interpretive history provides for a critical rephrasal that allows for a new perspective. The attention to ideographs seem best applied to highly sensationalized policy issues, which would extend to a variety of topics where the contest is ideological and the struggle is over the power to frame (and name) the policy object. This would certainly include most environmental policy issues, but it would include any policy issue that could be sensationalized.

In this chapter, the first section provides a review and discussion of the frame as a theoretical construct. The second reflects on the value of frame analysis from an interpretive-resolutive mode relative to the interpretive-regressive approach taken in the historical narrative. The third section discusses implications of these approaches to frames analysis with regard to agenda setting research. The fourth considers the public policy debates, and provides an evaluative judgment as to whether the discourse is better characterized as ideographic sloganeering or whether it was authentic in enabling discursive democracy. The fifth section explores the power of policy symbols relative to powerful actors and external forces that influence the adoption of a policy innovation.

The last section reviews the importance or benefit provided through this research.

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The Frame as a Theoretical Construct

At the onset of this project, I sought to develop the frame as a theoretical

construct through a review of the literature on frames and framing. This was completed

in Chapter 2 so that workable definitions of frames could be applied for the purpose of

the case narrative analysis, and for the frame mapping of content from news media articles using IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys. My first consideration was that in order for frames and framing to be useful for research these terms must have conceptual definitions that provide them distinct meaning for application in a broader theoretical framework. The “framing paradigm,” as Entman (1993) describes it, includes the frames of message senders and receivers, frames in a text, and the frames of the culture. This is expanded with the notion of Schön and Rein’s (1994) distinction between rhetorical frames and action frames, which are applicable at policy actor level and at the organizational level, such as with the idea of institutional action frames (Schön & Rein,

1994). These distinctions are intended to allow for frame analysis at the micro-, meso-,

and macro-level, and the intention was that this paradigm would be useful for bridging

the theoretical gaps in frame analysis between cognition and culture (Van Gorp, 2007,

p.61).

However, in review of frames at the human level, with regard to the individual

frames or cognitive frames, as they are sometimes called (c.f., Barsalou, 1992; Scheufele,

1999), there appears to be no significant distinction between the “frames” of policy actors

(Schön & Rein, 1994) and the related concepts of schemata, appreciative systems,

internal set, orientations, and assumptive worlds (c.f., Axelrod, 1973; Heclo, 1974;

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Putnam, 1976; Vickers, 1995; Young, 1977). Each uses different metaphors to provide

explanatory theories of policy learning, but they are used more or less synonymously

with the idea that the decisions of policy actors are informed by certain “mindsets” or

“habits of attention” that involve knowledge, beliefs, values and attitudes (Freeman,

2006, p.382). Such cognitive systems, which have also been described as an “adaptive

toolbox” (Gigerenzer, 2001) and an “ordering device” (Hajer & Laws, 2008) for

negotiating the environment, are posited to be too dynamic, interactive, and complex for

an analysis of static frames (Denzin & Keller, 1981; Frake, 1977; Van Gorp, 2007). Van

Gorp (2007) recommends using the term, “schemata” to refer to the interrelationship of

organized knowledge, personal experiences, values and associated feelings that

contribute to the viewpoints of individuals, so as to avoid confusion with the relatively

stable frames of a culture. That is, for Van Gorp (2007), “frames constitute broader

interpretative definitions of social reality and are highly interactive with dynamic

schemata” of individuals (p.63).

In reflection of the literature review and my application the “frame” as a

theoretical construct in the both the policy dialectic and frame mapping analyses, I

concede to Van Gorp’s point. The frames I’ve identified in both the narrative analysis and text analytic frame mapping analysis might better be considered cultural frames— either thematic or semantic frames—that are inscribed upon or adopted by individuals, and relate to cognition in the more limited sense of Bateson’s (1972/2000) picture frame metaphor and Minsky’s (1974/1997) generic structure. For example, in describing the

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Gardner (2012) used the term water

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bully, and Erie (2006), Goliath. David versus Goliath is a familiar story, but water bully

also becomes a story in that it is assumed that someone is being bullied by the bully and

that water is somehow involved. These frames are narrative in structure in the sense that

they provide a little story, very much in the way Iyengar and Kinder (1987/1995)

describe episodic frames. In this case, the frame structures the perceived relationship

between two entities in terms of power differential and contestation, and reveals that

writer perceives or at least wants the reader to perceive the relationship in that limited

context. Other examples of metaphorical narratives that rely on structured

representations would include the taste test in “Testing the Murky Waters of Taste”

(Balint, July 23, 1985), and the toast depicted during the Caltrans celebration where public officials “toasted the occasion with reclaimed sewage cocktails topped by maraschino cherries” (LaRue, 1987). In each of these examples, the frame in the text is a frame of reference for understanding the narrative and may provide hints or clues as to how policy actors see their world and define the context of their behavior. The conclusion here is that the structured representation as a cultural construction is a frame, but organized knowledge as networks of mental structures in the minds individuals is already well explained by schema theory (e.g., Axelrod, 1973).

Reflections on Modes of Research.

The application of the two modes of research using the methods of a case history narrative analysis and text analytic framing was attempted to address and mitigate the limitations of each. The qualitative description of the case narrative provides a fairly thorough treatment of the issue over broad span of time. Its purpose is to show causal

348 relations and provide researcher rephrasal that emphasizes the frames and ideographs in the discourse. The difficulty and chief limitation is that the qualitative thick description rarely moves past the detailed specifics of the case and that meaningful patterns are not readily identifiable in the historical data that was referenced (e.g., see Reese, 2001, p.8).

In contrast, the text analytic approach to frame mapping allows the researcher to identify and summarize patterns found in the text, and navigate large amounts of text fairly efficiently. However, text analytic frame mapping may over simplify the policy issue in reducing a fairly complex narrative into to a set of classifying measures (e.g., see Reese,

2001, p.8).

Although IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys was successfully applied towards frame mapping unstructured data, there are some inherent limitations to its capabilities.

Words are often polysemous, and meanings are anchored to a particular context. The method of frame mapping using IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys described in this dissertation is at the very least limited in its ability identify frames where meanings are suggested with irony or sarcasm (such as might be indicated by “scare quotes” or some material aspect of a framing device, like font type, size, emboldening or italicization), or where contextual background information not presented in the text is required for sense- making. In such cases, a text analytic approach is best suited to categorizing and showing relationships across key concepts that are manifest in the text. However, when both modalities are applied, they can be used in a way that complementarily mitigates the limitations of each.

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Both methods are considered interpretive research in that new information

obtained by the researcher is mapped against an existing theoretical framework for the

purpose of comparison, data translation and transformation (Reck, 2007). However, text

analytic frame mapping is intended to be more resolutive in that it is characterized by decomposition (Reck, 2007). Quite literally, text analytic frame mapping parses a larger system of text into its constituent components and identifies and organizes its basic elements and structures. Comparatively, the case narrative analysis is considered regressive in that the adoption of the policy innovation is contingent on something else

(Reck, 2007). Both the resolutive and regressive modes of analysis are reductive, but the purpose of the history is to trace back in time to identify causal relationships and points of origin or change. However, interpretive research, with regard to both text analytic frame mapping and the case narrative analysis, is characterized by rephrasal, meaning the objectives are clarification and “to open up new avenues of inquiry” (Reck, 2007, p.36).

Setting the Water Reuse Policy Agenda

In the introductory chapter, I proposed that an analysis of frame attributes and the media attention given to a policy issue over time should enable a better understanding how issues emerge and develop, and how attitudes toward the problem may have changed. In particular, this dissertation was intended to contribute to the body of research on agenda setting with regard to attribute salience transfer, political power and the role of media frames in problem definition. This was to include the identification of agenda issue attributes and the frequency of their occurrence as an indicator of salience,

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and also the “terminological or semantic differences in how an issue is described” (Kim

et al., 2002, p.10).

Chapter 2 included a review of agenda setting theory, which provides theoretical

assumptions for this analysis, including the theory that the frequency of media coverage

and article placement provides an indicator of issue salience regarding the media agenda

(Swenson, 1999). These factors have been correlated with the public’s knowledge of an

issue and its perceived importance in literally hundreds of empirical studies conducted

since the early 1970s (McCombs & Reynolds, 2009). Another theory, derived from

Dearing and Rogers (1992), is that there are three types of agendas (the media agenda,

the public agenda, and the policy agenda), and that agenda setting often occurs as a linear

process in which “the (a) media agenda influences (b) the public agenda, which may in turn influence (c) the policy agenda” (p.22). Using data from the case narrative and the text analytic approach to frame mapping, this section provides an assessment of the applicability of Dearing and Rogers’ model and the case study’s contribution to agenda setting theory.

Issue Salience and Attribute Salience.

An analysis of the frequency of media coverage and article placement is provided

in Chapter 3. Based on visual inspection of the distribution relative to subsections

provided in the case narrative, my interpretation of the distribution of media coverage

over time is that there are pulses in coverage that relate to other events that increased

issue salience. For example, in 1985 and 1987, the government officials staged publicity

events that involved drinking effluent produced at the Aqua I demonstration plant. Then,

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in 1991 the U.S. EPA and state of California brought a lawsuit against the city of San

Diego for failing to comply with federal and state wastewater discharge requirements.

There is less media coverage in the years 2000 and 2001, following the cancellation of

the Water Purification Project in March 1999, but the issue returns to the media’s agenda

in 2002, when San Diego BayKeeper and the Surfrider Foundation sued the city of San

Diego because of sewage overflows at San Diego’s beaches. Another pulse in coverage

occurs in 2005 when, as part of the legal settlement negotiations, the City Council

authorized a Water Reuse Study to assess options for maximizing beneficial reuse of the

water treated at the North City and South Bay reclamation plants.

There are also two distinct peak periods of coverage: December 1997 through

May 1999, and June 2007 through January 2009. The first is associated with opposition

to the proposed Water Repurification Program, which initially would have affected

predominantly lower income and minority neighborhoods. And, media coverage also

includes articles related to support for policy alternatives, such as “showers to flowers”

graywater recycling. During this period there were 17 “toilet-to-tap” headlines for news stories. There were no editorials or letters to the editor on this topic, but two Op-Ed columns during this period presented arguments in favor the Water Repurification

Project: “The Opportunities for Using Repurified Water in San Diego” (Roth, 1998) and

“We Need Water from Waste, Not a Waste of Water” (Simmons, 1998).

The highest peak in coverage occurred from June 2007 through January 2009 when the City Council voted to initiate an indirect potable reuse Reservoir Augmentation

Demonstration Project, which was vetoed by the Mayor, but reconfirmed by the City

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Council in November 2007. The media coverage following the override of the Mayor’s

veto includes the related policy controversies of a water and sewage rate hike, which was

ostensibly needed to fund the Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project (e.g., Lee,

July 27, 2008). News coverage during this time also includes contention between

environmentalists, business interests and local government over a proposed desalination

plant in the nearby city of Carlsbad (e.g., Burge, 2008).

With regard to assessing issue salience, the distribution of news articles, columns and feature stories over time showed peak coverage corresponding to the events leading to the cancellation of the Water Repurification Project, from December 1997 through

March 1999, and during the political struggle between the Mayor and City Council over the Indirect Potable Reuse/Reservoir Augmentation Demonstration Project from June

2007 through January 2009. But, overall, the distribution of news coverage was negatively skewed, meaning that coverage had increased over time, and that there was more media coverage during the latter episode, when only a water reuse study or a demonstration project was at stake, as compared with a full implementation project that was at stake in the late 1990s. So, even though the policy decisions were of lesser significance in the latter episodes there was more media coverage.

I interpret the increase in media coverage during the latter episode to be attributed

to three general factors: First, there was a heightened awareness of the issue, with the first

episode providing a contextual background or frame for the latter. That is, the policy

arguments against the Water Reuse Study and demonstration project often reference the

failure of the Water Repurification Project in the 1990s. Second, there was a longer

353 duration of contention in the latter episode, and the conflict was among high profile government officials and media elites, with the Mayor and Union-Tribune editorial board on one side of the issue, and the City Attorney and City Council on the other. In the first episode, the reservoir augmentation concept was uncontested by the media and city leaders until the final implementation plans revealed the reclaimed water would be blended into the raw water supplied to the poorer, largely minority communities. And third (as per Sapat, 2004), there were additional factors that contributed to the policy issue’s trajectory. These included additional stakeholder involvement; lobbying from the various interests that formed the Indirect Potable Reuse Coalition; the perceived need to augment the local water supply due to a drought that reduced local supplies and imported water from the Colorado River; a U.S. District Court ruling that would reduce water imported from the Sacramento Delta as part of an effort to protect the endangered delta smelt; and the impending requirement for the city to reapply for a Clean Water Act waiver.

With regard to attribute salience, the convergence of these conditions, which were made salient through media coverage, is coupled with a change in public opinion towards greater acceptance of the reservoir augmentation concept, largely based on a perceived need to develop a local water supply and “diversify” San Diego’s “water portfolio” (e.g.,

Showley, 2006), and the premise that the raw water supply already contained upstream wastewater discharges. This resulted in decreased public opposition to the demonstration project that is now in progress.

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However, the attempt at attribute transfer by the Union-Tribune editorial board was not effective in changing the policy trajectory. In Chapter 5, the analysis of the

Union-Tribune editorials shows the Reservoir Augmentation Project was framed as an unpopular, expensive, and unnecessary boondoggle of a project that presented risks to public health. None of these negative attributes transferred into public opinion that influenced the City Council’s decision regarding adoption of this policy innovation.

Interestingly, the policy was framed by supporters and opposition as a solution for augmenting the local water supply, even though its original intended purpose was to find an application for reclaimed water that would mitigate ocean pollution.

Media Agenda, Public Agenda, Policy Agenda.

From the documentation in the case narrative, it’s apparent that the policy objective of indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation had been on the city’s policy agenda since at least 1984, beginning with the Aqua II demonstration plant, which was intended to research the potential for aquaculture coupled with an advanced treatment train to produce water of potable quality. However, Dishman and associates

(1989, p.157) claim that water engineers from the neighboring city of Santee had initiated a program for gradually increasing public acceptance of the idea of using reclaimed water for drinking as early as 1959. In this case, the desired habitus or normalization was achieved through gradual increases in allowable contact over several years, from sight only without physical contact, to boating, and then to swimming.

In San Diego, as early as 1985, the San Diego Evening Tribune collaborated with local water officials in conducting public taste tests with treated reclaimed wastewater

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(Balint, July 23, 1985). There is also a documented ceremony in 1987, where public officials celebrated a contract to use reclaimed water to irrigate highway medians by

“toasting the occasion with reclaimed sewage cocktails topped by maraschino cherries”

(LaRue, 1987, p. B7). These documented efforts to naturalize the idea of drinking recycled water predate the public outreach and education efforts for the Water

Repurification Project and the Water Purification Demonstration Project, which are specifically designed to gain public acceptance through naturalization.

At first, there is uncontested support, but media coverage and the use of sensational headlines increases with public opposition as the policy moved towards the implementation stage of the Water Purification Project, which would have added highly treated reclaimed water only to the raw water supply of less affluent, largely minority communities. At this point, the injustice frame was taken up by activists for the Black and Latino communities who criticized the city government for “using them as human guinea pigs” (Balint, Nov. 12, 1998, p.B1). The increased political salience of the issue caused an initial delay in policy implementation as new plans were drafted to distribute the recycled water citywide (Balint, Nov. 12, 1998; Balint & Braun, 1998). However, the political damage was already done and the Mayor suspended the project by refusing to put the issue on the City Council’s budget agenda. In January 1999, the City Council eliminated the project from the city’s budget; and then, on the last day of March, the council formally voted to discontinue the project (Huard, May 19, 1999). In this episode, the Dearing and Rogers (1992) formulation is seemingly confirmed. It does appear that

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increased issue salience on the media agenda transferred to the public agenda, which

offset the issue’s trajectory on the policy agenda.

With regard to media coverage beginning in late November 2003, the increase in

media coverage does not change the policy trajectory. During this time, a City Council committee first recommended that the city conduct a one-year study on how to increase the use of reclaimed water, including the policy option of blending the treated effluent into the city’s reservoir. This action was taken as part of the city’s legal settlement with the Bay Council over ocean pollution that was affecting San Diego’s beaches and marine environment. During this period, the Union-Tribune editorial board supported the

Mayor’s opposition and printed 18 editorials arguing against an indirect potable

reuse/reservoir augmentation project. In this episode, the lawsuit from the Bay Council

and support from environmentalists, the business community and other stakeholders was

more influential in the policymaking process.

Public Discourse: Authentic or Ideographic?

This dissertation proposed to assess the role of the media as an interlocutor in the

policy process with regard to whether the media enabled the ideal of a deliberative,

discursive democracy achieved through authentic discourse, or whether the media was

engaging in ideographic discourse, devoid of authenticity and estranged from such an

ideal (Miller & Fox, 2007). In this discussion, authentic discourse and ideographic

discourse are theoretically conceptualized as the polar anchors of a continuum, and such

an evaluation is based on a preponderance of evidence. An authentic discourse is a

“high-level, inclusive, self-regulating discussion about what to do next regarding

357 problems of complex implementation” (Hansen, 1998, p.458) that results from the sincerity, intentions, engagement, and substantive contributions of its participants (Fox &

Miller, 1995). Ideographic discourse, in contrast, is a contest for the “capture and appropriation of visceral symbols” (Miller, 2002, p.88), characterized as an “anarchic babel” (Fox & Miller, 1995, p. 13) of excessive sloganeering and “insincere, attention- grabbing symbolic imagery” (Miller & Fox, 2007, p.125). That is, ideographic discourse is conceptualized similar to yellow journalism (e.g., see Campbell, 2001), but beyond sensationalism there is an attempt to use symbols and images that connotatively signify the values and emotions that would underlie a particular policy position (Miller, 2012).

I was initially inclined to believe the latter would be the case, that based on critiques of the media that have made it a target for framing analysis, beginning with the early propaganda studies, the media discourse would be ideographic, or at least more ideographic than authentic. The second was the view held by Sharkansky (2002); that policy slogans can serve a democratizing function by simplifying the conversation and making it more accessible, and in turn drawing the public into the debate. This is an important consideration because inclusiveness is a key empirical referent for gauging the authenticity of the discourse: “Presumably, the more actors involved in the discussion, the less likely it is to be controlled by institutional or elite interests and hence the more likely it is to be authentic” (Hansen, 1998, p.452).

Accordingly, in making an evaluative judgment as to whether the media discourse was more authentic than ideographic, I have to consider inclusivity, as evidenced by the use of policy slogans and metaphors intended to simplify the discourse

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and increase its accessibility, and also diversity with regard to discourse participation.

These conditions are evaluated relative to journalistic sensationalism and use of ideographs. When considering the Union-Tribune, from 1985, beginning with the

aquaculture pilot project through 1994, the initial proposal for the Water Repurification

Project, the news journalists and columnists supported the indirect potable reuse concept,

and aided the City of San Diego’s efforts to normalize the idea. The discourse on related

topics, such as sewage system upgrades in adherence to Clean Water Act standards, is

principally discussed in terms of economic impact. Areas of contention, such as where to

build a reclamation plant (e.g., not in my backyard) are discussed plainly.

The discourse does not become ideographic until 1997 when the Water

Repurification Project is routinely referred to as “toilet-to-tap” in the media, and plans

revealed that the recycled water would be distributed only to less affluent, largely

minority neighborhoods. At this point, there is public confusion and misunderstanding

about what the project involves, much of the opposition seems to be based on the idea

that treated toilet water was going to be used directly as potable water (e.g., Balint, July

30, 1998). Activists from the Black and Latino communities called the project a “Dr.

Frankenstein experiment” and claimed the government was “using them as human guinea pigs” (Balint, Nov. 12, 1998). This was the period State Assembly Member Howard

Wayne (D-San Diego) held special “toilet to tap” hearings and mailed surveys to constituents asking whether they supported “drinking sewage” (USEPA, 2004, p.235).

The project was officially “killed” in 1999, after the City Council removed its

funding from the budget, but returns to the policy agenda in 2001in response to a legal

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suit over sewage spills filed by San Diego BayKeeper and the San Diego Chapter of the

Surfrider Foundation. The City Council now refers to the project as “indirect potable

reuse” and “reservoir augmentation,” although policy opponents continue to call it

“toilet-to-tap.” The opposition to the project, at several stages, by the San Diego Union

Tribune editorial board is particular ideographic. As detailed in Chapter 5, the editorial

board loaded their arguments with “drinking sewage” type symbols intended to skew

public perception, and described the project as “unpopular,” “reviled,” and “infamous,” and as a “boondoggle” and a “scheme.” However, the frames that undergird the board’s

policy position were the risks and costs of the project, relative to the benefit of producing

a small quantity of potable water. These are rational arguments even though the

discourse was otherwise ideographic.

Exploring Power

In this dissertation, I adopt the position that material resources are only one

dimension of power and that discourse is also a vector of power (Lynch, 1999). With

regard to the historical-material dimensions of power, I accept a variation of the

traditional structuralist hypothesis that powerful actors, such as government institutions,

interest groups, organized classes of citizens, and particular individuals can and do

influence social change, and that “seats of power” are highly contextualized, and

dependent on “local institutional arrangements and history” (Taylor, 1990, p.2). The

significance of this perspective for the analysis of public policy is that it implies that the

identification of these powerful actors and the specification of the inflexibilities they

create in terms of constraints that inhibit democratic adjustment to social conditions is an

360 indispensable first step towards theory building (Taylor, 1990, p.2). And so, in my case narrative approach to frame analysis, I set a search for these centers of power and the identification of causal links.

As one example of this, in the case narrative I trace San Diego’s modern water import system—the San Diego Aqueduct—to President Roosevelt’s wartime directive.

The San Diego Aqueduct is the conduit that connects San Diego’s San Vicente Reservoir to the Metropolitan Water District’s Colorado River Aqueduct (Erie, 2006). During

World War II, San Diego was quickly transformed into a major military industrial complex (Nash, 1985) and the “blitz-boom” (Shragge, 1994) population growth quickly depleted the local water supplies. Certainly, this account of a president issuing a wartime order for the Army Corps of Engineers to build an aqueduct speaks to the idea of a powerful actor in a highly contextualized situation subject to local institutional arrangements and history. And, in this example, the completion of the San Diego

Aqueduct creates inflexibilities that inhibit democratic adjustment to social conditions.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Act (1928) authorized water distribution only to its member agencies. This required the water districts of San Diego

County to form the San Diego County Water Authority and join Metropolitan, which has been framed as “The Water Bully of Southern California” (Gardner, 2012), and a

“Goliath” (Erie, 2006) in its relationship with the San Diego County Water Authority.

San Diego’s desire to escape the perceived domination of the Metropolitan Water District results in a “water independence” frame (e.g., Clark, 1984) that later became one of the recurring policy arguments for the city’s indirect potable reuse/reservoir augmentation

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project, as identified in the text analytic frame mapping of letters to the editor and news

stories. A policy alternative, the non-story in this situation, would have been for San

Diego to have made its own connection to the Colorado River through the mountains,

which was the city’s original plan when it declined to join the Metropolitan Water

Authority when it was first formed in 1928 (Engstrand, 2005, p.142). However, because

of the war, the population grew too large too quickly, and there just wasn’t time.

This is only one example, and it is discussed here in some detail for the sake of illustration. Ideographs are identified (e.g., “water bully,” “water independence”), but

these are not self-generating. They have a source of origin that begins with the agency of

a powerful actor. As Calvin Morrill and James Owen-Smith write, “Frames do not

develop by themselves from organic, mythical processes; they require real people in

interaction and conflict to formulate, contest, modify, and deploy them” (p.93).

Throughout the case narrative there are powerful actors, interest groups,

organized classes of citizens, and particular individuals that influence the trajectory of

wastewater recycling as a policy innovation and are the point source for new ideographs.

In some instances, power is an external force exerted through the judiciary. For example,

Judge Oliver Wanger’s ruling to protect the delta smelt from overpumping reduced the

transfer of water from the Sacramento Delta to Southern California and created a court-

ordered drought for the city of San Diego beginning in 2007, which motivated interest in

developing alternative water supplies (Lee, Sept. 5, 2007). Since then “delta smelt” has

become an ideographic symbol among water users and environmentalists in a debate over

pumping limits. However, Judge Oliver Wanger, a powerful actor and external force

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(external to the issue of “toilet-to-tap” in San Diego) becomes the genesis of the “delta smelt” ideograph, which has since taken on a life of its own.

Ideographs like “water bully,” “delta smelt,” and “toilet-to-tap” suggest that

symbolic efficacy of language in the construction of reality grants social actors the power

to “name and create the world” (Bourdieu, 1991, p.105). Through the case study on

“toilet-to-tap” this dissertation has shown that discourses have a potential for a variety of

“ideological State apparatuses,” a plurality of institutional vehicles for promoting

(ultimately repressive) ideologies and “recruiting” human subjects through the use of symbolic representations of imaginary relationships between individuals and the real conditions of their existence (Althusser, 1971, pp.141-185). A prime example is the San

Diego Union Tribune editorial board, which through the use of the “toilet-to-tap” ideograph and other hyperbolized “drinking sewage” descriptors, creates imagery intended to generate a negative visceral reaction in the reader.

However, the poststructuralist notion of the self is one that, while not entirely free as from a liberal humanist viewpoint is also not inescapably determined. That is, while

“poststructuralists accept that the individual is to a large (although never knowable) extent the product of linguistic and cultural structures” (Bertens, 2008, p.106), susceptible to interpellation of ideologies promoted through discourses, the individual has a margin of freedom from which to resist and counter, thus creating conflict. And this is precisely how Bruce Reznik, Executive Director of San Diego Coastkeeper, dealt with the issue of “toilet-to-tap.” By adopting the moniker and using it casually at a city council meeting, as if it were more denotative than hyperbole, Reznik successfully

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reappropriated the policy symbol. In “Hey, If You Believe It, Say It Loud: Toilet-to-

Tap” (Nov. 4, 2007) Union-Tribune columnist Gerry Braun, inspired by Bruce Reznik’s

use of “toilet-to-tap” at a City Council meeting, called for other supporters (“toilet-to-

tappers”) to drop the euphemisms and scientific jargon. Reznik of San Diego

Coastkeeper is quoted as saying that terms like “indirect potable reuse” and “reservoir

augmentation” come across as “subterfuge,” and that when it comes to the “toilet-to-tap”

moniker, supporters from the environmental community should “own it.” Braun called

on others to do the same in an effort to strip the policy symbol of its negative

connotations. This reappropriation of “toilet-to-tap” is part of the normalization of a habitus of indirect potable water reuse.

In this dissertation, the emphasis on conflicting ideologies and discourses rather than class material differences is thought of in the context of the Marxist scholar Antonio

Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony: Popular culture becomes the arena in which dominant and oppositional cultural values vie to frame culturally shared perceptions that become integrated in social norms and are expressed through public policy (Jones, 2006, p.126; Van Dijk, 2001, p.355). Miller (2012) describes this contention as a political and cultural struggle in which ideographic normalizing is at stake. For policy analysis, this dissertation demonstrates that a focus on media texts and an analysis of policy frames in public discourses provides for an understanding of news media as an interlocutor in the policy process, and the hegemonic forces at work.

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Importance or Benefit of the Research

This dissertation draws on the literature on framing theory and frame analysis of media texts, and proposes a mixed-methods approach that includes a text analytic approach to frame mapping combined with interpretive-historical narrative analysis.

According to critical theorists, such as Frank Fischer (2003), there is a need for policy analysts “to examine a particular conception of reality as something that is upheld by key political actors through discursive interaction, as well as how oppositional forces seek to challenge these constructs” (p.85). This view is shared by Charles Abel and Arthur

Sementelli (2003), who call for public administration, through a synergy of social science methods, to focus on the ways in which “multiple social actors” negotiate policy and issues of representation and political control at “the locations of intersubjective exchange,” the points where “subjectivities (personal attitudes, values, and beliefs) meet”

(p.4). The “framing paradigm” (Entman, 1993) provides for such analyses. Text analytic frame mapping can be applied to identify key actors and organizations, and events, and connect them to each other and to their expressed statements as indicators of their beliefs and sentiments. Frame-reflective analysis identifies and “uses the differences between frames to forge an innovative policy design from a combination of plausible and robust arguments,” whereas frame-critical analysis uses these differences “to test and bolster some frames” (Hoppe, 1999, p.207). The integrated approach combines frame analysis, frame-reflection, and frame-criticism “in an optimal mix of hermeneutic and critical moments in policy analysis” (Hoppe, 1999, p.207). From this perspective, the structuralist approach to recapitulating a narrative is augmented with attention to the

365 psychological essences of policy actors, or the frames that underlie their policy positions.

This can be thought of as a critical-constructionist perspective that synthesizes conflict theory with social constructionism (e.g., as exemplified in Heiner, 2009, and Latimer,

2008).

The use of frames to define a social problem is therefore “critical in the process of attracting attention [to a particular aspect of an issue] during the agenda-setting stage of the policy process” (Jones, 1994, p.182). This is because the way in which a social problem is defined will set the trajectory for further debate and action (Dery, 1984;

Clemons & McBeth, 2001; Fischer, 2003). But more than defining the problem in terms of cultural values, frames “diagnose causes, evaluate these causes by making normative or moral judgments, prescribe remedies, and predict their likely effects” (Entman, 1993, p.52). Frames enable the “location, perception, identification, and labeling of occurrences,” and “by rendering events or occurrences meaningful, frames function to organize experience and guide action” (Snow, Rochford, Worden & Benford, 1986, p.464).

The use of narrative, rhetorical, and textual analysis that has been established in the literature so far has been “mostly to examine the research practice and writings of scholars, somewhat to examine and analyze organizational practices per se, and least of all as a tool in the analysis of and construction of policy” (Zald, 1996 p. 253). It is in this last area that this dissertation is intended to contribute. Frame analysis, in the study of how social reality is constructed in text, is proposed as an analytic lens. More specifically, this dissertation contributes to the literature specific to frame analysis by

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building on the corpus of case examples, and should have application for practitioners as

well as theoretical relevance.

Practitioner Applications.

First, the frame of a text is conceptualized as an empirically identifiable construct

that may have some utility value for policy analysts interested in tracking public opinion

and forecasting policy outcomes. This practical application would have more relevance

for policy issues for which opinion tracking polls are not available. This is more often

the case for local policy issues than national policy issues. Public opinion poll data are

generally from national polls and do not always allow for analysis of local government

policies (Turner, O’Connor & Rademacher, 2009, p.273). This presumes that general

audience media provide a strong gauge of public opinion because “media discourse

dominates the larger issue culture, both reflecting it and contributing to its creation”

(Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p.3). As policy actors compete for their definition, they

frame their claims and policy positions, and reframe or counter-frame the claims and

policy positions advanced by others (Murphy, 2001). And as the opposing sides continue

to reframe issues over time, the frames will continue to diverge, resulting in protracted

disagreement, or there may be “frame convergence,” to where disputants can reach

substantive agreements (Murphy, 2001). Identifying and tracking the frames of the

opposing sides of a policy issue may therefore be one way to monitor a policy’s

trajectory, and anticipate the outcome a policy debate (Murphy, 2001, p.281), since “the

manner in which issues are framed, defined, and perceived by policy makers will very likely determine that actions taken by them” (Sapat, 2001, p.347).

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Theoretical Relevance.

Second, with regard to framing theory, computer-aided text analytic procedures that would produce fairly consistent frame interpretations are outlined and demonstrated.

Frame theory has been described as “a fractured paradigm” (Entman, 1993) that “suffers somewhat from a tradition of loosely knit explications and operationalizations” (Coleman

& Dysart, 2005, p.6). Currently, there is “no unified understanding of frames or the framing process” (Gamson, 2001, p.ix). D’Angelo (2002) identifies three types of framing studies: cognitive, constructionist, and critical. While each presents a different analytical lens, it would seem that the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying these approaches are not necessarily incommensurate and that there is the possibility of considering these elements as part of a unified framework. The operational definition of the frame-in-text, and the approach to inquiry outlined in this dissertation are intended to add methodological rigor to frame analysis studies, and should serve as a springboard for additional research efforts that draw on frame-theory from an interpretive perspective. These would be meaningful contributions in light of the methodological criticisms of framing studies, which include creative hermeneutic interpretations to the point of analytical arbitrariness (Koenig, 2006; Matthes & Kohring, 2008; Tankard,

2001).

This dissertation is also intended to contribute to the corpus of research that focuses on media frames in problem definition and political power in agenda setting.

Agenda-setting setting concerns itself specifically with media effects regarding the transfer of object/issue and attribute salience from media to the public. Framing, in

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contrast, focuses on the construction of social reality as it relates to the policy process

(Takeshita, 1997; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). This includes the identification of

agenda issue attributes and the frequency of their occurrence as an indicator of salience,

and also the “terminological or semantic differences in how an issue is described” (Kim

et al., 2002, p.10). Media frames, as defined and analyzed in this dissertation, are the frames-in-text. This operational definition links framing with attribute agenda-setting theory (c.f., Entman, 1993; McCombs, 2004). The emphasis on the frame-in-text serves to advance “the explication of media effects by underscoring the special status held by certain attributes, frames, in the content of a message” (McCombs, 2004, p.87). Because the frame in a text is an “imprint of power” (Entman, 1993), I am interested in identifying whose narrative gains currency. This is premised on the idea that “only certain actors can produce frames that resonate…suggesting a critical role of ‘projective’ agency by key players” (Morrill & Owen-Smith, 2002). The exercise of mapping the frames of a policy debate, and throughout the course of a policy story, as advocated by Murphy (2001), may build on existing theories of how policy actors “devote their energies towards creating and reinforcing social and political values” (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962, p.952, cited in

Birkland, 2007, p.66) and whether such efforts succeed.

Further, this dissertation explores the role of the media as an interlocutor in the policy process and contribute to the academic discussion regarding where the public discourse of general audience media is located along a continuum of deliberative democracy in action as an ideal and ideographic discourses, policy contests driven by

“insincere, attention-grabbing symbolic imagery” (Miller & Fox, 2007, p.125), as its

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polar opposite. Public discourses characterized as a “bumper-sticker ballyhoo” of excessive “sloganeering” are thought to be estranged from democracy (Fox & Miller,

1997, p.64; Miller & Fox, 2007, p.126). Using the case example of San Diego’s water reuse policy discourse, the dissertation explored the degree to which symbolic arguments overshadowed rational public discourses, and questions whether the slogans and rhetorical symbols of public discourse jeopardize democratic processes. The view held

by Sharkansky (2002), that policy slogans serve a democratizing function, may better

characterize the use of “toilet to tap” in 2007 by IPR policy opponents and supporters.

That is, the “toilet to tap” policy symbol can be thought of as a heuristic that make the

conversation simpler to grasp and accessible to more people, and therefore draws the

public into the debate by “providing some meaning to those incapable of understanding

what is complex, or not wanting to spend the time to master it” (Sharkansky, 2002, p.75).

Underlying the concern over the hegemony of language is the longstanding idea

that the media mainly serve the interests of elites (Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Paletz &

Entman, 1981). That is, because “elites crystallize and define issues, provide supporting

information; they substantially influence, if they do not establish, public opinion” (Paletz

& Entman, 1981, p.184). The counterview is that the media maintain an adversarial

relationship with government and other elites, serving a “watchdog” function that

empowers citizens and furthers democracy (e.g., Keane, 1991). As W. Lance Bennett

and William Serrin (2005) observe, historically a critical media:

brought pressure to end slavery…helped bring about women’s rights… strengthened the civil rights movement…helped end of American involvement in Vietnam…exposed the accounting abuses of Enron and other corporations… revealed PCBs in the Hudson River and dangers to workers in plutonium plants…

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revealed abuses in how the New York Stock Exchange was run…[and] brought to public attention pedophilia in the Catholic Church. (p.176)

This was, I would conclude, is the case with the Union Tribune editorials printed in

opposition to indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation.

However, there is also the consideration that media reporting may also be biased

towards a governmental perspective since it is common for the media to report

information provided by government sources. For example, Linda Wines Smith and John

W. Roberts (2003) describe the Bureau of Prison’s Media Advisory Group as a private-

public partnership between government and the media for coverage of the Timothy

McVeigh execution. The concern here is that media content may be framed according to

an administrative ethos, and such concern becomes exacerbated when considering the

degree of cooperation alleged among political, corporate, and media elites in the

representation and construction of social reality (e.g., Stich, 2009). This is evident in the

early coverage of reservoir augmentation-related projects and policies, which received uncontested support by the Union-Tribune until the mid-1990s.

Such practice supports a “Leviathan Democracy” (Bovard, 2005, p.7, 171), anathematic to an American liberal democracy based on “sovereignty in the people who create the laws to which they subject themselves” (McGowan, 2007, p.35). In American liberal democracy, government authority is not to be exercised over citizens, but is derived from and granted by the citizenry, as, for example, was recently explicated in

New York’s 2010 Bill of Rights (Section 2: “Supreme Sovereignty in the People”). In order for sovereignty to be vested in the people, citizens must be informed well enough to participate in governance and grapple with social problems.

371

In the case example, the shift in media coverage of the aquaculture treatment facilities and the reservoir augmentation concept, which is characterized by uncontested support and optimism by city government and Union-Tribune journalists during the

1980s to the critiques over the environmental justice concerning the distribution plans for the recycled water in the 1990s, and the more inclusive public debates in the 2000s, suggest a discursive democracy, even if ideographic, is a tenable ideal. And, if the progressive-era ideal of the “informed citizen” is not reasonable, democracy can still be furthered by a “monitorial” one (Schudson, 1998, pp.310-311). That is, even if the ideal of citizens actively gathering and processing all the information required to address all types of social problems is untenable, the citizen sovereignty demanded of democracy can be achieved if citizens, at the very least, “scan (rather than read) the informational environment so they can be alerted to actions affecting the wide variety of issues meaningful to them” (Merritt & McCombs, 2004, p.31). This seems to be demonstrated in the “toilet to tap” case example.

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APPENDIX A. OPINION ITEMS SAMPLED FOR FRAME MAPPING

373

This section includes the articles that were sampled from the San Diego Union-

Tribune for Frame Mapping using IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys v.4.0.1. Two separate analyses were conducted. One set of analyses included only items published in the Opinion section of the newspaper. The other included articles published in the News,

Local, and Zone sections of the newspaper. The table of Opinion items samples includes a unique ID number that was assigned for the purpose of analysis, the original print date of the item, the newspaper column where the item was printed, the author’s name and description, as provided, and the headline.

Opinion Items Sampled for Frame Mapping the Indirect Potable Reuse Debate

Print ID Date Column Author Headline 1 03/19/95 Op Ed John Christianson, Economics instructor Can we afford reclaimed waste water? at University of San Diego

2 03/04/98 Op Ed Duane J. Roth, President and CEO of The opportunities for using repurified water Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., Vice- in San Diego Chairman of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and a board member and past president of BIOCOM San Diego.

3 03/25/98 Op Ed Robert Simmons, member of the We need water from waste, not a waste of California Water Reuse Foundation’s water Advisory Committee

4 11/25/98 Op Ed Robert Simmons, attorney for the San Increasing our water supply by conserving Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club and member of the California Water Reuse Foundation’s Advisory Committee

5 04/04/00 Op Ed Ron Roberts, member of the county Let competition resolve stadium problem Board of Supervisors, and candidate for mayor of San Diego

6 09/11/01 Op Ed Robert Simmons, attorney for the San Our region needs repurified water Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club and member of the California Water Reuse Foundation’s Advisory Committee

374

Print ID Date Column Author Headline 7 11/27/02 Op Ed Robert Simmons, attorney for the San Facing facts about water reclamation Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club and member of the California Water Reuse Foundation’s Advisory Committee

8 01/16/03 Op Ed David Schubert, Professor at the Salk Problems, promises of recycled water Institute for Biological Studies.

9 03/07/03 Op Ed Harold Bailey, Director of Operations Recycled water essential to San Diego’s and Water Quality for the Padre Dam future Municipal Water District.

10 01/13/04 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Another study? Reclaimed water is not a feasible alternative

11 08/22/04 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Recycled water - a good way to increase the region’s supply

12 08/27/04 Letters Marsi A. Steirer, Deputy Director, City City studies recycled water opportunities Of San Diego Water Department, Director Water Reuse Study

13 07/15/05 Letters Brant Nohlburg, Vista The advantages of reclaiming wastewater

14 07/29/05 Letters Larry Breitfelder, Board Member, Otay Region is pursuing many water options Water District

15 12/07/05 Letters Marsi A. Steirer, Deputy Director for Nothing secret, nothing bad about water Water Policy and Strategic Planning recycling City Of San Diego

16 12/07/05 Letters Milton N. Burgess, San Diego Water recycling

17 07/24/06 Letters Union-Tribune Editorial Board Yuck! San Diego should flush “toilet to tap” plan

18 07/27/06 Letters Edvard A. Hemmingsen, La Jolla Treated wastewater and drinking supplies

19 07/29/06 Letters Glen Schmidt, San Diego Another view of `toilet to tap’

20 08/04/06 Op Ed Bruce Reznik, Executive Director of Ensuring San Diego’s water future San Diego Coastkeeper.

21 08/05/06 Letters Gary Arant, Valley Center San Diego’s thirst for reclaimed water

22 08/05/06 Letters Steve Green, Santee San Diego’s thirst for reclaimed water

23 08/05/06 Letters C.E. Hight, San Diego San Diego’s thirst for reclaimed water

24 09/13/06 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Renew the waiver - don’t hit consumers with $1 billion in costs

375

Print ID Date Column Author Headline 25 11/22/06 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Rate hike caveats – ‘toilet to tap,’ sewage plant overhaul must go

26 12/11/06 Letters Scott Graham, San Diego Primary sewage treatment by city should end.

27 08/23/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Water foul warning from Otay: What’s in your pipes?

28 09/06/07 America’s Chris Reed Aguirre in over his head: chapter 237 Finest Blog

29 09/13/07 Letters Orson Bevins, Chula Vista Meeting our drinking water needs

30 09/13/07 Letters John Hermann, Coronado Adding to debate over drinking water.

31 09/15/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Perrier, it isn’t. Aguirre toilet-to-tap plan doubles sewage bills

32 09/18/07 Letters Betty Wood, Spring Valley Debating what should flow through our pipes

33 09/19/07 Letters Doug Sain, Mira Mesa Looking for water solutions

34 09/19/07 Letters Bob Stuart, Julian Looking for water solutions

35 09/19/07 Letters Tom Zeleny, San Diego Looking for water solutions

36 09/20/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board In a panic Aguirre call for moratorium is self- destructive

37 09/26/07 Op Ed Bruce Reznik, Executive Director of Addressing San Diego’s water woes San Diego Coastkeeper.

38 10/14/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Get the waiver sewage scheme no help to environment

39 10/14/07 Letters Milton N. Burgess, San Diego Water need, waste and conservation

40 10/31/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board A monstrous waste city dumps precious reclaimed water into pacific

41 11/10/07 Letters Ron Schneider, San Diego Flushing away ‘toilet-to-tap’ fears

42 11/10/07 Letters Edward H. Pitts, Oceanside Flushing away ‘toilet-to-tap’ fears

43 11/10/07 Letters Neil Gibbs, Encinitas Flushing away ‘toilet-to-tap’ fears

44 11/14/07 Letters Jeffrey Scott Rosan, San Diego Not on same page with desalination advocates

376

Print ID Date Column Author Headline 45 11/16/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Get the waiver will council stick it to sewage ratepayers?

46 12/06/07 Letters Earle Callahan, Coronado Maybe it’s time to do away with lawns

47 12/07/07 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Muddled priorities fire chief goes begging while hotels get fat

48 12/10/07 Letters Connie Dahl, San Diego Our future water options

49 12/10/07 Letters Sharon Dubois, San Diego Our future water options

50 12/19/07 Letters Ronna M. Fillhar, San Diego Mayor’s stand on water issue praised

51 12/22/07 Letters Dave Geehan, Carlsbad Time to move past a polarizing term

52 12/24/07 Letters Thomas Loverso, Spring Valley Pleas for water savings seem hollow

53 12/30/07 America’s Chris Reed America’s finest blog finest blog

54 01/06/08 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Redouble recycling just not from the sewer to the tap

55 01/17/08 Letters Don Christiansen, Carlsbad Lawsuit targeting desalination project

56 02/18/08 Letters John Suhr, La Mesa Water shortages and a thirst for solutions

57 02/18/08 Letters Richard Korts, Escondido Water shortages and a thirst for solutions

58 02/18/08 Letters Julianna Faulkner, Mission Beach Water shortages and a thirst for solutions

59 03/02/08 Letters Donald Wright, Rancho Bernardo Seeking solutions to water shortages.

60 03/20/08 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board ‘Toilet to tap’ worries do drugs in sewage flow pose health threat?

61 03/21/08 Letters Carolyn Chase, Pacific Beach Put focus on water filtering systems

62 03/22/08 Letters Stephen J. Gordon, San Diego ‘Toilet-to-tap’ term does not aid debate

63 03/29/08 Letters Philip R. Gagnon, San Diego ‘Toilet-to-tap’ term does not aid debate

64 05/22/08 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Untapped resource Bilbray’s measure aids region’s water needs

65 06/14/08 Letters Steve Bowen, El Cajon Add San Diegans to endangered species list

66 09/08/08 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board No toilet-to-tap special water rate hike unwarranted

377

Print ID Date Column Author Headline 67 09/10/08 Letters Paul Clausen, San Diego Another view of aqueduct water

68 09/15/08 Letters Jeffrey Olsen Field, San Diego Drug contamination in our drinking water

69 10/13/08 Op Ed John C. O’Neill, chairman of the board Diversity is key for our water supply of the San Diego Taxpayers Association

70 03/10/09 Letters Milton N. Burgess, San Diego On San Diego’s airport future

71 03/22/09 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board A monstrous waste despite drought, city dumping precious reclaimed water in ocean

72 04/01/09 Letters Mark Robak, Chula Vista Wastewater coalition responds to editorial.

73 04/04/09 Letters B. Chris Brewster, San Diego Regarding “a monstrous waste” [Editorial, March 22].

74 04/26/09 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board Do your part, every San Diegan has an obligation to save water.

75 01/23/11 Editorial Union-Tribune Editorial Board The yuck factor: Get over it

76 01/29/11 Letters Bruce Henderson, San Diego Water supply: Is plan yucky or fine?

77 01/29/11 Letters Gabriel Solmer, Interim Executive Water supply: Is plan yucky or fine? Director, San Diego Coastkeeper

378

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