God Sent the Rain, But We Need an Angel to Build the Infrastructure to Manage It

If Californians are to avoid a future where they have to endure permanent water rationing because of inadequate water infrastructure, a few members of the economic elite will have to break with the pack. As it is, in the wealthiest, most innovative place on earth, ordinary citizens are being conditioned to accept algorithmically monitored lives of scarcity, supposedly to save the planet. But in reality, scarcity is a convenient way to consolidate political power and economic resources in the hands of existing elites, who count on the multitudes to assuage their downward mobility with online Soma.

So who will break with the pack? Who will be an Angel? For a few million dollars, a sum that any one of California’s hundreds of mega millionaires might throw down the way normal people buy a latte, an initiative to fund water infrastructure could be placed on the ballot. This, at least, would give Californians a choice.

The More Water Now campaign was formed earlier this year to qualify the Water Infrastructure Funding Act to appear as a state ballot initiative in November 2022. Virtually every expert in California agrees that more water infrastructure is necessary, that conservation alone cannot guarantee a reasonable and reliable water supply to Californians, much less cope with climate change. Projects to capture storm runoff and recycle urban wastewater are urgently needed, and this initiative would provide the funding to get it done.

Nonetheless, the campaign finds itself offering a solution everyone wants, but nobody wants to pay for.

Private sector construction unions, who could enlist hundreds of thousands of their members to sign petitions, have an understandable reluctance to take on the environmentalist lobby. Construction contractors that design and build infrastructure have deep pockets, but don’t want to see well funded activists target them in retaliation for their support, jeopardizing existing projects. Water agencies all over California desperately need the funds this initiative would unlock, but worry that the proposals for which they currently await approval would be denied by state bureaucrats with a demonstrated hostility to new infrastructure.

Farmers offer the most poignant example of why the More Water Campaign hasn’t attracted more financial support. With no water to irrigate crops, they’re just trying to survive. And for the few with the resources to fight, why? They supported the 2014 water bond that passed but still nothing has been built, the 2018 water bond that was narrowly rejected by voters, and the 2020 “Dams not Trains” initiative that didn’t qualify for the ballot. Now, with an initiative that focuses as much on urban water recycling as on storing runoff, the farmers expect help from other sectors, as they should.

So where are the Angels? Where is the Angel who famously said “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters?” Doesn’t that reflect a more sweeping sentiment, that we need to invest in genuine productive assets, because the real cost of food, water, energy and housing are higher now than they were forty years ago? Whatever happened to the Silicon Valley mantra of “better, faster, cheaper”? Does that value only apply to cyberspace, and not the real world?

There is a strong environmentalist argument in favor of more water infrastructure. If climate change is a genuine threat, then the need to upgrade California’s water infrastructure becomes more urgent, not less. This initiative funds projects to store storm runoff in off-stream reservoirs and underground aquifers. It funds projects to recycle urban wastewater. It leaves the choice of projects to approve up to the Water Commission, which environmentalists can hardly accuse of being hostile to environmentalist priorities.

There is also a compelling economic argument for more water infrastructure, but despite its merit, it has no effective constituency today. Subsidizing water infrastructure is easily a tax neutral proposition, if not positive. By lowering the cost of water, the price of food, utility bills, housing, and all other products and services that depend on affordable water go down. This means the tax revenues spent subsidizing water projects are offset by less government spending on subsidies and rebates to low and middle income households. At the same time, the economic growth enabled by more affordable water creates more profits and more tax revenue.

This simple economic argument, which leans old-school Democrat and decentralizes wealth, used to inform public infrastructure spending without debate. Now it’s rarely even discussed, and when it is, it’s dismissed by libertarian Republicans as wasteful folly and by progressive Democrats as crony capitalism. But back in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration publicly funded roads, public buildings, rural electrification, and water infrastructure that are still paying economic dividends today. Similarly, back in the 1950s and 1960s, the California State Water Project publicly funded a water system that, despite decades of neglect, enables millions to live in coastal cities.

It is time to upgrade California’s water infrastructure for the 21st century. It is time to upgrade all of California’s infrastructure. But thanks to institutional fear and hidden economic agendas, the conventional wisdom is to frame inadequacy as virtue. Where are the rebels with the means to challenge this destiny? Where are the rebels with the temerity to embrace a future of abundance?

Where are the Angels?

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

It’s Raining Again, but California Still Needs to Spend Billions on New Water Infrastructure

It’s only December, and two major storm systems have already passed over California with another one on the way. These storms are encouraging news in a parched state where multi-year droughts have been declared four times just since 2000. But most of the runoff from these storms quickly ends up in the Pacific Ocean. In a 2017 study, the California Public Policy Institute estimated so-called “uncaptured water, river water in excess of the total volume diverted by water users or kept
instream for system and ecosystem purposes,” averaged over 11 million acre feet over the preceding twenty years.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Californians built the most impressive system for interbasin water transfers on Earth. Each year millions of acre feet of water are transferred from the Sacramento/San Joaquin and Colorado River watersheds into the massive coastal cities: the San Francisco Bay Area, greater Los Angeles, and San Diego. This water is diverted from storage reservoirs via aqueducts to treatment plants in these urban centers, where it is used once, with the wastewater then treated and discharged into the Pacific.

Today, however, this impressive system is no longer enough. Too much uncaptured water still flows uselessly to sea, and too much urban wastewater, imported at great expense, is not reused. And not only does California’s water system require expansion to capture and use storm runoff and wastewater, but the existing system is failing. Aqueducts have subsided and cannot operate at capacity. Dams require seismic upgrades. Just restoring what we’ve got will cost tens of billions.

Instead of investing in new water projects, and maintaining existing water infrastructure, however, California’s state legislature and water agencies have become expert at squeezing every drop out of the aging system built over fifty years ago. Over the past few decades Californians have made impressive gains in water efficiency. Total water diversions in California for agriculture and cities – roughly 30 million acre feet per year for agriculture and 8 million acre feet per year for cities – have not increased even while California population has grown and irrigated farm acreage has increased.

But to cope with worsening droughts and a diminished Sierra snowpack, as well as new laws that limit ground pumping and increase allocations for ecosystem health, conservation alone cannot guarantee Californians have an adequate supply of water. To address this urgent new reality, the More Water Now campaign has been formed to qualify a ballot initiative to fund water projects in California, and to streamline the approval process.

The Water Infrastructure Funding Act, a proposed ballot initiative that could face voters in November 2022, aims to solve the challenge of water scarcity in California. Voters and policymakers are encouraged to read the fine print in this thoughtfully written initiative. Rather than pick projects for funding, it defines project categories that are eligible for funding. Principal among them are funds for wastewater recycling, storm water runoff capture, aquifer remediation and recharge, off-stream reservoir construction and expansion, and aqueduct repair.

The value of this approach is to ensure that funding from this initiative is consistent with projects already planned by state, regional and local water agencies. In San Jose, for example, it will cost billions to build wastewater recycling plants. But that would be a high priority project under this initiative to receive the necessary funds.

The centerpiece of the proposed initiative is the requirement to set aside two percent of the state general fund – roughly four billion per year – for water projects until five million acre feet of water per year is produced by a combination of new water projects and new conservation programs. It is likely that two million acre feet per year of new water could be supplied through treating and reusing wastewater throughout the state. The initiative also funds programs to recover up to an additional one million acre feet per year through conservation programs. Another two million acre feet of storm runoff could be captured each year in off-stream reservoirs, floodwater wetlands, and underground aquifers.

But this inspiring goal is accompanied by a provision of equal importance, a project category eligible for funding that focuses not only on water quantity, but water quality, and water equity. Quoting from the initiative itself, also eligible for funding are “projects designed to increase the clean, safe and affordable supply of water to all Californians with emphasis on California’s disadvantaged communities.”

The California State Water Board recently identified a $4.6 billion funding gap just to fix California’s most at-risk municipal water systems. These inadequate water systems disproportionately impact people living in California’s underserved communities, especially those with higher Black or Latino populations. This initiative explicitly includes these projects as eligible for funding.

Another necessary part of this initiative are moderate revisions to the California Environmental Quality Act and the Coastal Act. All the funding in the world will not solve California’s urgent need for more water infrastructure if reasonable time limits aren’t placed on environmental review. And because the initiative leaves the final choice of which projects to approve in the hands of the California Water Commission, it is extremely unlikely a project will go forward unless environmental concerns are adequately addressed.

Californians who are hesitant to support massive public works projects need to understand that taxpayers will foot the bill for water one way or another. If no new water supply infrastructure is built, water scarcity will drive water bills up. Taxes will then be spent on government subsidies to help low income households pay their water bills, as well as to fund rebates for consumers to purchase appliances that consume even less water. Those appliances, even after the rebates, will be costly and they don’t work very well. Even worse, water scarcity will mean food prices will soar. And without abundant water, it will also be harder to increase the supply of new homes, driving housing prices up.

This economic fact is often lost on critics who oppose government spending of any kind: Socializing the cost of public works, especially to increase the overall water supply, is a tax-neutral proposition that yields a future of abundant water instead of scarce water, enabling broader economic growth and a lower cost-of-living.

The rains have come back to California. Nobody knows how long they’ll last. But rain or shine, we should not pass up the chance to solve water scarcity forever in the Golden State.

This article originally appeared as a guest opinion in the Epoch Times.

Initiative to fund and fast track water projects is badly needed

California is in the grip of its fourth drought since 2000. To cope with worsening droughts, over the past few decades Californians have made impressive gains in water efficiency. Total water diversions in California for agriculture and cities – roughly 30 million acre feet per year for agriculture and 8 million acre feet per year for cities – have not increased even while California’s population has grown and irrigated farm acreage has increased. But conservation alone cannot guarantee Californians have an adequate supply of water.

The Water Infrastructure Funding Act, a proposed ballot initiative that may be headed for the November 2022 state ballot, aims to solve the challenge of water scarcity in California. Rather than pick projects for funding, it defines project categories that are eligible for funding. Principal among them are funds for wastewater recycling, storm water runoff capture, aquifer remediation and recharge, off-stream reservoir construction and expansion, and aqueduct repair.

The value of this approach is to ensure that funding from this initiative is consistent with projects already planned by state, regional and local water agencies. In San Jose, for example, it will cost billions to build wastewater recycling plants. But that would be a high priority project under this initiative to receive the necessary funds.

The centerpiece of the proposed initiative is the requirement to set aside 2% of the state general fund for water projects until 5 million acre feet of water per year is produced by a combination of new water projects and new conservation programs. It is likely that 2 million acre feet could be supplied through treating and reusing wastewater throughout the state. Another 2 million acre feet of storm runoff could be captured each year in off-stream reservoirs, floodwater wetlands, and underground aquifers. The initiative also funds programs to recover an additional 1 million acre feet per year through conservation programs.

But this inspiring goal is accompanied by a provision of equal importance, a project category eligible for funding that focuses not only on water quantity, but water quality, and water equity. Quoting from the initiative itself, also eligible for funding are “projects designed to increase the clean, safe and affordable supply of water to all Californians with emphasis on California’s disadvantaged communities.”

The California State Water Board recently identified a $4.6 billion funding gap just to fix California’s most at-risk municipal water systems. These inadequate water systems disproportionately impact people living in California’s underserved communities, especially those with higher Black or Latino populations. This initiative explicitly includes these projects as eligible for funding.

Another necessary part of this initiative are moderate revisions to the California Environmental Quality Act and the Coastal Act. All the funding in the world will not solve California’s urgent need for more water infrastructure if reasonable time limits aren’t placed on environmental review. And because the initiative leaves the final choice of which projects to approve in the hands of the California Water Commission, it is extremely unlikely a project will go forward unless environmental concerns are adequately addressed.

During those fortunate years when California still has more rain than it can handle, the need to build more water infrastructure loses its urgency. But a state as wealthy and innovative as California should never have to live with water rationing. Investing in next generation, environmentally friendly projects to create water abundance is within our grasp. We should seize this opportunity.

Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013.

This article originally appeared as a guest opinion in the San Jose Mercury News.

California Needs More Water Now

AUDIO: California’s water infrastructure was built in the 1950s and 1960s to supply water to a state with a population of 20 million. Today, with nearly 40 million people living in California, the state’s neglected water system lacks the capacity to cope with multi-year droughts. California must invest in a new water system for the 21st century. Edward Ring with Bryan Miller on Nation State of Play.

https://omny.fm/shows/nation-state-of-play/edward-ring-california-needs-more-water-now

Rebuttal to LA Times Criticism of the More Water Now Initiative

You can say this for Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Michael Hiltzik, he doesn’t conceal his biases. His description of our attempt to fund water projects to prevent a drought induced water supply crisis in California? He writes: “A majestically cynical ploy being foisted on taxpayers by some of the state’s premier water hogs,” one that is “costly and dishonest,” and will “wreak permanent damage to the state budget and force taxpayers to pay for ecologically destructive and grossly uneconomical dams, reservoirs and desalination plants.”

In his column, published December 2 in the Los Angeles Times, Hiltzik presents the same arguments against spending on water infrastructure that have been heard over and over again. By doing this, Hiltzik provides a useful checklist against which to express the other side of the story.

First of all, are Californians confronting a drought emergency or not? On October 19, Governor Newsom declared the entire state of California to be in a drought emergency. On November 18, the San Jose Water Company, in response to “extreme drought,” imposed water rationing on over a million customers, with strict fines for violations. Back in August, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time in history. The Bureau is imposing mandatory cuts that will eventually affect urban and agricultural consumers in California that depend on water from the Colorado River.

When confronting water shortages this severe, with no end in sight, at what point does it become necessary to invest in “grossly uneconomical” water infrastructure? How much worse do things have to get? One must ask how California’s Water Projects, a sadly neglected engineering marvel, could have ever gotten built, if the mentality that grips today’s critics of water infrastructure investment had been present back in the 1950s and 1960s.

Hiltzik asserts this initiative is “being foisted on taxpayers by some of the state’s premier water hogs,” that will “gift growers and dairy ranchers with millions of acre-feet of effectively free water.”

This will come as a surprise to those California farmers that were just notified by the California Department of Water Resources, that for the first time ever, they “won’t get a single drop from the network of waterways in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta other than what’s needed for health and safety.”

Hiltzik claims California’s farm sector has the potential to reduce its overall consumption of water by an additional 22 percent through “more efficient usage.” But to back that up, he cites a study concluded nearly eight years ago, before farmers completed massive investments in water efficiency to cope with the ongoing drought that didn’t end until 2017. California’s farmers now use some of the most water efficient techniques anywhere in the world.

The issue that journalists – and the voters they influence – have to confront honestly is simple: Are Californians prepared to deal with prolonged droughts by subjecting urban and agricultural users to mandatory water rationing? Do Californians believe that conservation alone can deliver an adequate supply of water to cities and farms, or should the state subsidize investments to upgrade and expand water infrastructure?

This is a bipartisan issue. Forcing the California State Legislature to prioritize investment in water infrastructure is not an ideological goal, it’s a pragmatic necessity. Water doesn’t flow Right or Left. With budget surpluses, spending two percent of the state general fund each year on water projects will not impose a new burden on taxpayers. The legitimate function of government is to subsidize public works in order to take pressure off ratepayers, wherever they are, so necessities like water are abundant and affordable.

Solving the Problem

With that in mind, the Water Infrastructure Funding Act is written to eliminate water scarcity in California. It allocates funding, roughly $4 billion per year, until five million acre feet of water is being produced annually by new water projects. To accomplish this goal, an all-of-the-above approach is taken when defining projects eligible for funding.

For example, additional conservation programs are funded to achieve up to 1.0 million acre feet of reduction in use. To achieve the remaining four million acre feet, the potential to reuse wastewater can likely recover another two million acre feet per year. Even environmentalists agree that wastewater reuse is necessary not only to reduce the amount of river water that has to be imported into California’s massive coastal cities, but also to end the discharge of nitrogen rich treated effluent into the ocean.

The cost to achieve the goal of total wastewater reuse flatly contradicts Hiltzik’s accusation that farmers stand to gain the most if this initiative is approved by voters. The cost to upgrade the water treatment plants serving Los Angeles County, combined with the cost to remediate the capacious aquifers in the Los Angeles Basin, easily exceeds $10 billion. Worthy projects like these require state funding.

To reach the ultimate goal of five million acre feet, along with conservation and reuse projects there are the more controversial solutions of reservoirs and desalination. But reservoirs, which will still have to be approved by the California Water Commission, can be off-stream. The proposed Sites Reservoir, if built to its original specifications, would not only yield a half-million acre feet of water per year, but would offer pump-storage to absorb surplus renewable electricity to be discharged every day during peak demand on California’s power grid.

Hiltzik expresses skepticism that new infrastructure can “squeeze an additional 5 million acre-feet out of the stones that are California water sources.” He’s wrong. Most of that five million acre feet can be achieved through conservation and wastewater recycling. But capturing runoff to store in off-stream reservoirs and underground aquifers can reliably deliver the rest, if the requisite infrastructure is built. This is well documented.

An authoritative study issued in 2017 by the Public Policy Research Institute describes so-called “uncaptured water,” which is the surplus runoff, often causing flooding, that occurs every time an atmospheric river hits the state. Quoting from the study, “benefits provided by uncaptured water are above and beyond those required by environmental regulations for system and ecosystem water.” (italics added). The study goes on to claim that uncaptured water flows through California’s Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta “averaged 11.3 million acre feet [per year] over the 1980–2016 period.”

Surely it is possible to harvest 20 percent of this uncaptured water to store each year in off-stream reservoirs and underground aquifers.

Unsurprisingly, Hiltzik expresses concern about the initiative’s modifications to CEQA and the Coastal Act. But these changes don’t eliminate environmental review, they merely reduce the time required for project approval to a year or two instead of a decade or two. Virtually every water expert among the hundreds we spoke with, agreed that without some environmental regulatory relief, it would be extremely difficult to build new water infrastructure by the time Californians are going to need it.

Journalists – and the voters they influence – are invited to study the full text of the Water Infrastructure Funding Act and consider its inclusion of eligible projects that don’t directly increase California’s supply of water but nonetheless are absolutely essential to the well-being of Californians. Replacing the toxic lead pipes in the LAUSD public schools. Repairing and extending water mains to underserved communities. Restoring riparian habitats – with the accompanying benefit of recharging aquifers – in urban environments. Where are California’s cities and counties going to get this money, if the state doesn’t make it a spending priority?

Investing in infrastructure to guarantee abundant water in California would create tens of thousands of jobs. It would make housing more affordable since homebuilding permits depend on reliable water. It would keep food affordable. It would lower utility bills to consumers and make rationing unnecessary. It would create resilience against climate change and against civil disasters.

Back in 2012, Governor Brown signed Assembly Bill (AB) 685, making California the first state in the nation to legislatively recognize the human right to water. The Water Infrastructure Funding Act will put meaning to that legislation, benefiting people and the environment.

To learn more about the progress of this game changing initiative, visit the website https://MoreWaterNow.com.

This article was originally published on the website of the More Water Now campaign.

San Jose Mercury Editorial Reflects Zero Sum Mentality About Water

Perhaps to atone for an article they’d published a few days earlier, which offered a balanced report on our effort to qualify a ballot measure to fund and fast track construction of water supply infrastructure in California, the San Jose Mercury on November 19 published a blistering editorial that condemned the initiative. But the editorial makes unfounded claims, cherry picks its facts, and caters to extremist versions of environmentalism.

For starters, the proposed “Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022” is not merely a product of “Central Valley Republicans and Big Ag backers.” It is supported by a bipartisan and growing coalition of Democrats and Republicans, water agencies, cities, counties, business associations, community groups, construction workers, homebuilders and environmentalists that need the state to invest in water supply projects.

The editorial claims that more water for farmers – to grow food, we might add – “comes at the expense of urban users and the state’s fragile environment.” This reflects a zero sum, conflict mentality that is completely out of character with California’s heritage and culture. More water projects mean more water available for wetlands, more water available for the Delta ecosystems, and more opportunities to manage chronic droughts and climate change. And, to state what ought to be obvious, more water projects also means less imported food, and more affordable food.

What the San Jose Mercury’s editorial reflects is part of a broader malaise. It reflects a commitment to scarcity and rationing as the solution to environmental challenges, instead of searching for policies that can deliver abundance without significantly harming the environment. Which of these approaches is more consistent with the creativity and innovation that has made the Silicon Valley one of the wealthiest places on earth?

Why isn’t the San Jose Mercury appalled that the City of San Jose has just imposed punitive restrictions on residential water use on their residential consumers? Where are the entrepreneurs and problem solvers that typify Silicon Valley? Is this they best they can do? Why doesn’t the San Jose Mercury expose the special interests that benefit from scarcity, that can’t wait to sell mandated sensors and software to help “manage” urban consumers down to 45 gallons per day? Why aren’t they thrilled that, as the Legislative Analyst confirmed, this initiative will take pressure off local budgets, freeing up more money to fund police and fire departments?

Have the Mercury editors actually read The Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022? Do they understand that it would fund upgrades to wastewater treatment plants, so water currently imported from Northern rivers could be reused instead of being dumped, with too much nitrogen and excessive salinity, back into the San Francisco and Santa Monica bays? Do they understand how much more water will be left in the rivers, once these urban reuse projects are built? Are they aware of the provisions that fund replacement of the toxic pipes in Los Angeles public schools and elsewhere, or upgrade water treatment plants in underserved communities, or fund conservation projects to reduce use by another 1.0 million acre feet per year? Do they understand that by funding offstream reservoirs to capture surplus water during storms, there’s more water not only for farmers and cities but also to maintain riparian ecosystems?

One of the biggest criticisms of this water initiative is its changes to environmental regulations. But it doesn’t exempt projects from environmental review, it merely puts a reasonable time limit on how long these reviews can take. Instead of taking decades to get projects approved, now it will take years. Maybe it’s time for opinion page editors, journalists, and voters in California to think about just how much time and money has been squandered on bureaucracy and litigation, and recognize that without reasonable reforms to these regulations there will never be adequate water infrastructure in California.

During this Thanksgiving holiday and thereafter, the proponents of The Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022 call on newspapers and the voters they influence to consider the values of abundance and hope in their editorials on the topic of water policy. Coping with drought and climate change is a challenge that can be met without condemning urban users to 45 gallons of water per day, nor does it require fallowing millions of acres of productive farmland. Massive investment in new water projects is urgently needed, and this initiative offers a solution that will work for everyone.

To learn more about the progress of this game changing initiative, visit the website https://MoreWaterNow.com or send an email to press@morewaternow.com.

This article originally appeared on the website of the More Water Now campaign.

“More water now” is much needed in California

AUDIO: The challenge of water scarcity in California is often framed as a battle between farmers and urban users. But it doesn’t to have to be a zero sum game. Either via action by the state legislature, or through a citizen’s ballot initiative, California can build new systems to capture, store, distribute, treat, and reuse more water. Rationing is not inevitable. Edward Ring with Trent Loos on Rural Route Radio.

https://www.ivoox.com/en/rural-route-radio-nov-12-2021-more-water-audios-mp3_rf_78180348_1.html

Here is a plan to create more water for California

Re “California should create more water – much more“; Commentary, Oct. 28, 2021

There is an answer to Jim Wunderman’s position that “state and federal governments should commit to creating 1.75 million acre feet – about 25% of California’s current urban water use – of new water from desalination and wastewater recycling by the end of this decade”: the Water Infrastructure Funding Act of 2022, a constitutional initiative proposed for the November 2022 state ballot.

This initiative, submitted in August, has been analyzed by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which predicted “increased state spending on water supply projects and potentially less funding available for other state activities.” Notwithstanding the multibillion-budget surplus California’s Legislature currently enjoys, this redirecting of spending for water projects is what the initiative proponents intend. The state of California has neglected its water infrastructure for decades.

This initiative requires 2% of the state’s general fund be used to construct new water supply projects, and it doesn’t sunset until new projects add 5 million acre feet per year to the state’s water supply. That would be about 2 million acre feet coming from recycling and desalination, another 1 million from conservation programs, and the rest from runoff capture into off-stream reservoirs and aquifers. It also revises the California Environmental Quality Act and the Coastal Act to streamline project approval.

Instead of identifying specific projects for funding, this initiative carefully defines eligible projects to include everything that would produce more water, from conservation and water recycling, aquifer recharge, new reservoirs and aqueduct restoration to runoff capture and brackish/ocean water desalination. It also funds remediation projects, such as replacing the pipes in public schools in Los Angeles.

The initiative is attracting broad based and bipartisan support. Some of the opponents that have already emerged apparently have not read the measure, because they’re criticizing it for not funding projects which in fact it will fund.

This initiative aims to replace water scarcity with sustainable water abundance. Its benefits translate not only into more water, and hence more options to maintain and improve ecosystems throughout the state, but also an economic boom. Lower prices for water will translate into more affordable food, affordable water for every industry reliant on water, widely available water supplies to enable more home construction, and the creation of tens of thousands of high-paying construction jobs.

This article originally appeared as guest commentary on the website Cal Matters.

Solutions to Top Issues That California Needs to Fix

AUDIO/VIDEO: We’re all aware by now of the problems facing California, but there isn’t enough discussion of practical solutions. This interview is a review of a nine-part series written for the California Policy Center that offers policy solutions to seven critical challenges: Energy, Water, Transportation, Housing, Homeless and Law Enforcement, Forestry, and Education. Edward Ring with Siyamak Khorrami on California Insider.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/top-issues-that-california-needs-to-fix-edwards-ring_3990334.html

The Courage to Find Common Ground

The power of polarizing issues, inflamed by social media, has reduced opportunities for Americans to work together to achieve objectives about which they normally would agree. Bitter disagreement among Americans on issues ranging from vaccination policy to policies governing abortion, immigration, critical race theory, and gender, leave them barely willing to work together on anything.

One area of broad agreement, however, is infrastructure. Nearly all Americans agree that infrastructure, as it is traditionally defined, needs new investment. Freeways, bridges, railroads, dams, aqueducts, seaports, airports, transmission lines, pipelines; all of this needs to be maintained and upgraded. Trillions need to be spent.

But even on issues where there is potential agreement, solutions are now filtered through the lens of polarizing ideologies. What is today’s definition of infrastructure? Is it physical assets, or something more ephemeral? Do infrastructure priorities have to be established based on restoring race and gender equity, or by concerns about climate change? Should some infrastructure deliberately be allowed to deteriorate, to avoid “induced demand” and the unsustainable consumption that would result?

Debate over these questions, waged by politicians already alienated from one another on unrelated issues that are nonetheless far more relevant to their constituents, has paralyzed America’s ability to upgrade its infrastructure. Navigating a pathway out of this paralyzing morass takes more than just compromise, it takes the courage to adhere to controversial premises.

Chief among these is to reject the idea that legislated scarcity is the only option to combat climate change. In every critical area of infrastructure there are solutions that can enable a future of sustainable abundance. To embrace this premise does not require us to dismiss concerns about climate change, it merely requires us to stand up to policy demands from climate activists that are obviously flawed, if not impossible.

In California, environmental regulations have brought infrastructure investment to a standstill. Without expanding energy, water, and transportation infrastructure, it is nearly impossible to build housing, the cost-of-living is punitive, water is rationed so food is overpriced, the overall quality of life is reduced, and the money that ought to be paying skilled workers to operate heavy construction equipment instead goes into the pockets of environmentalist lobbyists, bureaucrats, litigators, and activist nonprofits.

To change direction, Californians can rebuild their energy infrastructure in a manner that doesn’t violate environmentalist principles, but instead balances environmentalist concerns with the interests of its residents. Why aren’t Californians, who in so many ways are the most innovative people in the world, approving and building safe, state-of-the-art nuclear power plants? Why aren’t they developing geothermal power, since California has vast untapped potential in geothermal energy? Why haven’t California’s legislators revived the logging industry they have all but destroyed, and brought back clean power plants fueled by the biomass of commercial forest trimmings?

Californians can also change direction on their water infrastructure by adopting an all-of-the-above approach. They can build massive new off-stream reservoirs to capture storm runoff. Even in dry winters the few storms that do hit California yield surplus water that can be captured instead of allowed to run off into the Pacific. These off-stream reservoirs could also feature forebays from which, using surplus solar electricity, water could be pumped up into the main reservoir, to then be released back down into the forebay through hydroelectric turbines to generate electricity when solar electric output falters. Why aren’t Californians recycling 100 percent of their urban wastewater? Why aren’t they building desalination plants?

These are solutions that may not be perfectly acceptable to environmentalists, but they’re also not hideous violations of environmentalist values. They should be defended by their proponents without reservations, but also with a willingness to spend extra to mitigate what can be mitigated. Civilization has a footprint, and we can only pick our poison. The solutions favored by environmentalists, such as wind turbines, battery farms, EVs, biofuel plantations, and solar farms, have environmental impacts that are arguably even worse than conventional solutions.

Another potentially polarizing issue—achieving “equity” with infrastructure—doesn’t have to be dismissed by proponents of practical infrastructure investment. If the pipes in Los Angeles public schools are still leaching toxins into the water students would otherwise be drinking, then invest the money and fix the pipes. If inadequate funding for water treatment plants in low income communities in California’s Central Valley means they are not operating, or cannot expand their operations, then increase the funding. But at the same time don’t lose sight of the fact that if there is more energy, and more water, that will benefit everyone, especially low-income households, no matter where they are and no matter what other challenges they may confront.

Finally, it shouldn’t be controversial to restrict discussions of infrastructure to infrastructure, but it is. Here is an area where, once again, establishing the terms of the discussion requires adhering to a controversial premise, which is that discussions of “infrastructure” need to be restricted to the traditional definition. Basic infrastructure, offering surplus capacity instead of scarcity in the critical areas of energy, water, and transportation, creates the solid foundation upon which all the other amenities of a prosperous and equitable society may flourish.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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