next on kqed "newsroom," the politics of water conservation. >> it's a political headache. >> building safer homes in the world's poorest country, and meet the american children left behind in china. why they spend years separated from their parents. ♪ ♪ good evening, welcome to kqed "newsroom," let's talk about the drought. you already are conserving water, but soon, you may have to reduce water use even more. next week the state water resources control board voting on a plan requiring water districts to cut usage by 36%. what's that look like?

scott schafer spoke with the managing editor and the environment writer. >> paul rogers, let's talk water. >> happy to do it. >> four years in the droughts, we have teeth on state regulations over water use. give us a sense what it means for sense for cities that have to have a 36% reduction in the water use. >> yeah. what the governor's done here, in a lot of ways, is fair. he's essentially said we're going to look at all the cities in california, all the water districts, and we're going to see based on per capita use, who has already done a pretty good job conserving water, and those places only have to save as little as 8%, and that includes places like san francisco, hayward, east palo alto santa cruz, and then the places at the other end of the scale not doing a good job, having higher percentage of use, they have to do more and they will have a lot of pain in their communities where the low users people are

barely going to feel it. >> when you say "they," do you mean individuals and businesses or the water directs or both. how does that work? >> i mean both. under brown's rules, that take effect june 1st after the state water board votes on them may 5th under those rules any city or water district that does not meet their target that is given to them by the state it faces a $10,000 a day fine. that's a lot of money. brown is not telling each place how you meet your goal. he's just saying you have to do it. some places put water cops out there, limit watering, golf courses, other places water the lawn once a week. it all depends on where you live. >> water districts had authority to issue $500 fines. how many have been issued? any idea? >> very very few. the reasons are multiple. number one when cities and water agencies sell less water, they make less money, but fixed costs remain the same paying the electricity bill and employee

salaries. there's a disinacceptabilitysentive to conserve. it's 5 political headache. people get mad. they are elected agencies. they want to do anything but conserve, but now they are forced to because the drought is the worst in state history. >> so they may pass along these fines to individuals right? >> well no. i think what's going to happen is we're not going to know until later in the summer whether the governors state water board is fining cities $10,000 a day. but what is going to happen is the cities are going to put penalties in place, some raise the cost of water at the higher end, you know, and penalties and things if you use more than a set amounts. >> so we had a court rulruling appeals court ruling, weeks ago strike down water tier pricing schemes vmts what's schemes. what's that mean for the plans if anything? >> taking down the rules cities had for targets. if you charge more for something, they use letszss of it. water, santa cruz charges $3 per

unit to 10 units, and above that it's $50. they had huge conservation because of that. the court said you can only charge higher rates if you can show that that's what the cost the government to provide that water. you cannot charge punitively higher rates, so, now, some of the cities, especially around sacramento, the inland empire where it's hot and people use water to water the lawns, they have gone to brown. give us a break. it's too hard. what he did was say, no. >> too bad. >> figure it out. >> yeah. now, of course, this does not include agriculture and farms. the governors says they took a hit in terms of water allocation, but who is monitoring that? ground water as well. is that included in their allocation cutbacks? >> farmers use 80% of the developed water in california that's the water that people use. now, they only contribute 2 % of the total state gdp, but they have already taken a bit pig hit, and there's two important

things here. number one, they cut back zero the amount of water from the delta, from state and federal agencies. they over purpose their own ground water. there are rules but they do not kick in for years. they slit their own throats using the ground water. they have no alternative. bankruptcy is the other option. if an almond grower pumps less water from his well they cannot move that to san francisco or los angeles. >> seems like almonds are the per rye ya crop in california. is that fair? do they take a lot of water and, therefore it's a hard demand for water because they are treeing. you can't leave them fallow. >> that's the issue. very few people in the state would say you'd be able to get a bill through legislature to tell farmers what crops to grow no more than what computers to make. >> the government has no interest in that anyway. >> no. it makes a lot of money, high unemployment rates, they want to send kids to college like

everywhere else. it's not like google or apple is going to move to another area. that's all they have. you know, they, after a long recession have finally found a way to make money with almonds but that's right. they are hardening demand. when you have row crops, if you have a drought, let it go. you can't let trees go. that's the political problem. >> so a lot of folks in california and businesses cut back, conserving water. so who are the big water wasters right now? >> anybody with a lawn at this point. you know, a lot of people in urban areas have not really felt the pain of the drought yet. we've watched farmers feel it. we watched fields go fallow and orchards die, but we water lawns lawns use 50% of the water in residential areas. no reason to complain it's hard. just water the lawn half as much, and you'll save 25% of the well use. >> also it seems a lot of room to use more recycled water or water from your shower, for example.

>> exactly. >> people put a bucket in the shower and water plants with that. >> i have a family of four, and i cut water use 40% in the house without making changes on indoor use, just put buckets in the shower, cut watering the lawn to one day a week, and use buckets on with the kids on weekend to water plants. i'm down to nine units a month, and we have an okay unit, it's okay. you can do it. >> paul rogers, model citizen environment writer. as always thank you. >> thank you, scott. ♪ ♪ and now to nepal where hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless after last week's devastating earthquake. the magnitude 7.8 quake killed more than 6,200 people. many died when buildings collapsed. joining me now is janis rogers, operating officer of geohazards

international, working to reduce risks of natural disasters. welcome. >> thank you. >> what are the biggest challenges to building structures in countries like nepal? >> a couple things you need. first you need a standard so that people know what to do. they know how to build. people have to have resources to build correctly. and the government has to enforce the building code. that's perhaps the most important thing. >> well, what are the codes like in nepal? how do they compare here to the bay area? >> well, codes in nepal are modern earthquake resistant design codes developed in the mid-1990s, and codes around the world are similar in a lot of ways and nepal has a very good building code. the difficulty, of course, is that it has not been followed in all the new construction since it was adopted and, of course there's all the construction that predates the code that was not built to that code. >> so why haven't the codes been followed? is it an enforcement problem? nepal has also been besieged by

political turmoil. >> yes. i think enforcement is a big concern. anywhere. especially in nepal, the authorities are just in a position where the demands are so heavy on them, there are many, many buildings being build every day, every month, and they don't have adequate staff or resources to go around and inspect all the buildings. so it's really an impossible task for them. but i will say that there are some efforts that have been underway for the last couple years to change that. >> are those efforts good enough in light of this tragedy? can nepal build safer housing to quickly help tens of thousands of people now homeless? >> yes, they can. one of our partner organizations, the national society for earthquake technology in nepal, has been doing a building code compliance program for the past, i believe more than a year and they've been starting to see some good

results. i was just there in december. they were telling me about that they were pleased with the way that the program was developing, so we're hopeful that with that good start that similar efforts can be made building new buildings after this earthquake. >> and in developing countries, you have the economic factor, and is it economically feasible for a lot of these families, for example to rebuild and have seismically safe home. what's the cost differential? >> people need help, but it does not necessarily cost that much more to build an earthquake resistance resistant building where you already build a building anyway. in some cases it's 5% more. >> is that all? >> in some cases, it's more than that, but it's not a huge amount necessarily because you still have to buy the reenforcing. you still have to buy the concrete, but you need to buy more and reenforce steel has to be put in the right place, so those are things that people can

do. >> when you look at this situation, the magnitude of the tragedy, it's just so immense. are there examples from other countries that have gone through a similar experience, and emerge from it with safer buildings after a major quake? >> yes, i have to point autoout an example in india. there was a massive earthquake in 2001. many people died. many buildings collapsed. after that, the state really made significant efforts to improve their buildings. people started following code. they also developed an innovative idea to help people that maybe they could not afford to hire a structural engineer to help with the building. they developed standard plan sets that are available with the authorities, and so someone can come pick up those standards plans that are designed by an engineer and have an earthquake resistant building. there's a lot of other programs

happening in india as a result of that earthquake. there's a lot of changes made. >> just in the 30 seconds we have remaining, then wharks are the lessons to learn from the nepal earthquake? >> well, i think it makes a lot of sense to invest ahead of time in preparedness in safer buildings a loath of attention gets focused on relief after the fact, when if you make the investments beforehand, you can save a lot of lives. >> point well taken. janis rogers, geohazards international, thank you. >> thank you. ♪ ♪ we're going to switch gears now and talk about immigration. american born children are chinese immigrants spend their childhood in china away from their parents. we visited one kindergarten where many of the students are

american. >> this is kemper, a private kindergarten in a small town in southern china's province. like many schools in china, the day here begins with morning exercise. what is different about kemper is most of the children are american by birth. in china, they are known as left behind foreign children. the principal at kemper -- [ speaking in chinese ]

>> the children are only a few months old when they arrive, and it will be years before they meet their parents again. for decades, people have been leaving the province to find work overseas. from this small town, some 60,000 have immigrated since the 19 880s. he's with the chinese teaching association. >> for most people, it was a

one-way trip. china town across the united states, they send money home to help parents build houses, struggling to survive in the u.s., they began to send their young children back to china. >> this boy was sent back to china when he was a year old. his grandparents have raised three other children for their sons and daughters working overseas. >> his mother sends him toys clothes, and gifts from the u.s., but the only contact he's had with her has been through a computer screen.

>> at this kindergarten more than two-thirds of the 20 250 -- 250 students were born outside of china. across the province, as many as 20,000 boys and girls are left behind as foreign children. [ speaking in chinese ]

>> the principal at kemper says turnover is constant. [ speaking in native tongue ] >> by the age of 5 or 6, most children return to the u.s. to attend elementary school. in less than a month this 6-year-old will take that journey.

[ speaking in native tongue ] ♪ ♪ >> after five years apart, he will soon be reunited with her parents. [ speaking in native tongue ] well, joining me now are reverend norman fong, executive director of the china town

community development center, and annette wong working at chinese for affirmative action. welcome to you both. annette you worked with the parents of the children. tell me more about their situation. >> yeah, sure. when i was living out on the east coast in philadelphia, i had the chance to work with a couple of parents who had sent their kids to -- back to the province to be raised by grandparents, and their situation was really -- it was a really hard situation. they were young immigrants themselves, and once they had children, the place where they where are working restaurant work, but it was, like a takeout stand. it was not a place where you could raise children and they did not earn enough of a living to be able to afford child care, and so without extended family in the picture in the united states, really sending them back to be raised by their grandmothers was 9 the only

option. i think for a lot of newer immigrants, it's really hard to earn a living wage, a stable job to find stable housing that's affordable, and there's a lot of barriers, and life is unstable. it's hard to raise children in those environments. >> it was a heart breaking piece to watch actually, because these kids are brought back to china at such a young age, being born in the u.s., and once they are school age and enter the public school system here in the u.s. they brought back. by then they are 50 -- 5 or 6 years old, and have been so long since seen their parents. what's the reentry process in. >> there's a lot of challenges, right off the bat, the country they do not know customs culture is different, language barriers, for most, not learning english, and they also are starting to live with their parents, who are their parents, but at the same time, in some ways, strangers, they only interacted with through a computer screen. there's a lot of challenges.

>> and reverend fong, you worked in chinatown for many years. asian immigrants continue to arrive in san francisco's china town. where are they finding housing? what are they doing for work? >> so a lot of the new im immigrants live in what people call sro residential hotels. they are single small single rooms, 8 by 10 and if you can imagine, since single means one person, and you have five people living in there with bunk beds, it's pretty rough. so it's tough to get jobs. when i was younger, at least there were sewing factories and i was put in a box as a kid, but at least all the relatives are around, and that industry is gone, so you gotten restaurants, you got wherever -- care giving sometimes, but it's hard. it's hard to figure out a plan to pay for child care which is a difficult thing.

it's tough to find housing in the hottest market in the united states, san francisco. >> and speaking of the hot market we are in the midst of a tech boom, san francisco, especially. what are some of the challenges and opportunities that are presenting themselves to the people that you work with every day? >> the tech jobs are not going to the families that we work with. >> what kinds of jobs are they taking primarily in the restaurant industry? >> the restaurant industry. there's not a lot of choices, now. so, actually care giving is going up, taking care -- and whatever -- i mean one of the best jobs if you can do a hotel, get into a hotel job, that's really good. some people are lucky for that but -- >> i agree with norman. it's restaurant work janitorial work, cleaning office buildings -- >> and construction. >> construction, yeah, and hotel

work, if folks are lucky a lot of hotel work is unionized so there's higher pay and better benefits to raise a family and care for children, but you know, folks are lucky to get into those jobs. >> reverend fong, your organization recently did a study on poverty in san francisco. >> yes. >> just last year the results came out. what did you find? >> so it's going to shock some people in san francisco, but it won't shock us in chinatown. so the largest affected group with highest amount of poverty is actually the chinese-american community. >> the chinese-american community? >> yes, and the asian community. it's -- what is did? 38450 live under the federal guidelines of poverty, and that's a shock to some, but there was an increase between 2007 and 2013. when the highest rate of unemployment and poverty during this period. it was rough. we are coming out of our rough

period. >> what are the driving factors for that? did you study it? did you take a look at that? >> no. we just checked the numbers, and it shocked a lot of people because people kind of stereo type different ethnic groups as doing fine in our case. that's part of the problem. we put the study together to let national foundations know, too, because we get less than 1% of our foundation support from around the country, and that's because if you add all the figures together, all the asians, there's a lot doing really well, high educated, and then in chinatown, you know it's bad, and, actually, 12 cities around the country the asian population is very poor suffering very quietly, like even sending kids away. >> and so, anetnette, is this happening in urban centers, and stereo types happen because the

data is aggregated to everybody but in the urban centers, it's a different space of poverty? >> i agree with reverend fong, when we see studies down, it's household incomes, and comparing incomes, you know, for a family that's a nuclear family, you know, the income might be so high, waenand we look at the asian income, but that looks higher, but that's because there's five earners there with children. the household size is larger. sparse that out per income earner it's not as high as what we are seeing with native born. >> i was going to mention that a lot of people come to china town one of the best tourist attractions, but inside look, almost half of our community live in these single rooms. they are called residential hotels, and it is affordable housing. people do not have a choice. you send the kids away. you live in a closet room.

it's the history of our community as we celebrate asian-pacific heritage month. like, my dad went through angel island parents left kids and family behind to work on the railroads with the irish, irish too, and it's just been a tough life for our families but the other side of it is that we love our kids so much we're willing -- >> to do whatever it takes. >> whatever it takes yeah. >> let's wrap it up in 30 seconds that we have getting back to the segment we have. what role do grandparents and uncles play in immigrant families in the bay area? >> yeah. that's a great question because even in my own family i was raised with my grandmother and she, you know supported us with doing some of the child care, but she also worked, and so i think with families that are able to have extended family to help with the household duties including child care, that can be life checking. >> for you, it was reality.

thank you, both, for joining us today. >> grandparents take care of all kids. >> on that note, thank you, both. >> thank you. >> that's all for our show and thank you for joining us. for all kqed news coverage go to kqednews.org. we leave you with the newest exhibit at the center the fancy animal carnival. have a good night. ♪ ♪

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