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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Explaining an Initiative to Fund Water Projects

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AUDIO/VIDEO: How do ballot initiatives bypass a negligent state legislature? Can ballot initiatives be used to fund water projects, so Californians will not have to experience water scarcity in the future? Can a ballot initiative be used to amend laws and regulations that have made it almost impossible to get approval and permits to construct water infrastructure in California? A 42 minute YouTube interview with Edward Ring on Mike Netter’s Town Hall.

An Agenda to Fix California

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As a recall election looms and embattled Governor Newsom fights for his political life, the political ads, as usual, are expensive pablum. That’s what we’ve come to expect, of course, but this election is nonetheless more than a referendum on a failing governor and failing policies. It’s a chance to think about what California could be. Instead of candidates pledging to “lower taxes on the middle class,” which obviously isn’t a bad idea, contenders for governor might discuss very specific policies they would champion.

Moreover, as voters cast their ballots and decide whether or not to keep Newsom in office, they might think about which candidates they’ll support in the future. Do they want to continue supporting political mannequins? Talking puppets that spout focus group tested cliches when you pull a string in their back? Or candidates that may be a little rough around the edges, but possess the courage, the vision, and the attention to detail that California needs now more than ever?

Here, being as brief but as specific as possible, are some ideas to solve some of California’s biggest problems. Most of them are controversial. It would be nice to find a politician with the guts to espouse all of them, without equivocation and without exception.

Problem: Unreliable and expensive energy:

Solution: Upgrade California’s natural gas powerplants to run at maximum efficiency and without being shut on and off. End the restrictions on natural gas hookups in new construction. Keep Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open. Streamline the permit process for additional natural gas and nuclear power plants. Allow additional extraction of California’s abundant reserves of natural gas and oil. Relax if not repeal the CO2 emissions targets pursuant to AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Continue to provide incentives for renewables, but recognize that an all-of-the-above energy strategy is an unavoidable necessity for developing nations with massive populations. Show the world how to do it in the most responsible manner possible. Restore abundant, affordable energy to Californians. Click here for more.

Problem: Scarce, expensive, rationed water:

Solution: Allocate a fixed percent of the state general fund to finance new investments in water infrastructure. Like energy, pursue an all-of-the-above strategy – runoff capture and storage, potable reuse of urban wastewater, off-stream reservoirs and expansion of existing reservoirs, percolation basins for aquifer recharge and recovery, and desalination. Invest enough to make the entire urban megapolis in Southern California independent of imported water. Streamline the punitive processes that make it take multiple decades to get projects approved. With all of this, again, set an example to the world of how to do it right. Restore abundant, affordable water to Californians. For more, go here, here, here, and here.

Problem: Congested, dilapidated, inadequate roads and freeways.

Solution: Recognize that smart roads are the future of transportation, not the past. Upgrade and widen all of California’s freeways. Recognize that automotive technology is in flux and repeal the zero emissions targets that prevent development of advanced hybrids. Develop protocols to designate smart lanes where next generation vehicles can convoy at high speeds. To make these investments cost-effective, reform the California Environmental Quality Act to reduce the time and expense of approving projects, and restructure CalTrans to outsource engineering and construction work to private contractors. For more, go here, here, here, here, and here.

Problem: Homes cost too much.

Solution: Increase the supply of homes by increasing density in the urban core, and building entire new cities along the 101 and I-5 freeway corridors and elsewhere. Quit pretending that California, a vast state that is only 5 percent urbanized, is running out of room for people. Leave existing suburbs alone and leave zoning decisions to local elected officials. Recognize that wood framed homes with reasonable outdoor space are what most families prefer, and that these homes are less expensive than metal and concrete multi-story structures.  It takes two weeks to get a subdivision approved in Texas, but it takes twenty years to do it in California. End the war on suburbia and eliminate the outrageous costs and delays for building permits. For more, go here, and here.

Problem: There is a crisis of law and order and homelessness.

Solution: Restore the ability of police and courts to criminally prosecute and incarcerate citizens for selling hard drugs, public intoxication, and petty theft. For those homeless that haven’t committed crimes, construct centralized shelters in less expensive parts of cities and require job training and sobriety as a condition of entrance. California has wasted tens of billions constructing shelters and “supportive housing” at a cost that averages nearly $500,000 per unit. This is incredibly corrupt and utterly futile. Use that money to build safe barracks and pay counselors and vocational instructors. Reopen the fire camps for the able bodied criminal homeless and put them back on the fire lines. Take back our streets. For more, go here, and here.

Problem: Our forests are incinerating themselves and the air is unbreathable.

Solution: Bring back California’s timber industry, which as recently as the 1990s was harvesting 6.0 billion board feet per year from California’s forests. Today, barely 1.5 billion board feet come out. Why weren’t there massive fires every year back in 2000? Because logging was keeping up with regrowth as recently as ten years earlier. But now, for over thirty years, it has been nearly impossible to log, to thin, or do controlled burns, at the same time as our fire suppression industry has become incredibly effective. The result is overgrown forests of tinder dry, overcrowded and stressed trees. Of course they burn like hell. The solution is to let timber companies reopen mills and start logging responsibly again. They will clear the powerline corridors and maintain the fire roads and fire breaks, just like they used to, in exchange for logging rights. Prevent fires. Create jobs. Generate tax revenue. Supply affordable, in-state lumber for housing. Win, win, win, win. Click here for more.

Problem: Our schools are failing low income communities.

Solution: Stand up to the teachers’ unions, by creating competition in public instruction. This can be accomplished by making it easier to open charter schools, and taking away the cap on how many charter schools can operate. It can be accomplished by creating education savings accounts for every parent of a K-12 student, allowing those parents to use that money for the school of their choice – public, charter, private, parochial, or even homeschool. Theoretically, such a program could be revenue neutral or even save the state money. At the same time, reform the public schools by requiring a longer period before teachers can earn tenure, by favoring merit over seniority in layoffs, and by making it easier to fire incompetent teachers. Other ways to rescue K-12 education in California would be limit union negotiations to pay and benefits and outlaw teacher strikes, and to empower parents to opt-out of exposing their children to sexually explicit or politicized instruction. Click here for more.

The tragic reality in California today is that an entire complex – progressive billionaires, public sector unions, powerful environmentalist lobbyists and litigators, with nearly universal support from the legacy media, social media, and academia – considers most of these solutions, if not all of them, to be extreme. They’re not. They’re moderate, common sense solutions to serious problems that are obviously not being adequately handled based on what this complex considers to be the conventional wisdom.

Imagine California’s future if these policies became reality. The solutions suggested here for energy, housing, and forestry would actually generate tax revenue, along with hundreds of thousands of good jobs. The solutions suggested for education are revenue neutral. To supplement private investment, the economic boom these solutions would impart to the state overall would generate the tax revenue necessary for public investment in water and transportation infrastructure.

Imagine a state where instead of importing energy from Venezuela, or electricity from coal burning states, or lumber from British Columbia, or lithium from West African mines owned by the Chinese Communist Party, we would be producing all of these essential resources right here. Imagine the prosperity this would create. Californians consume these resources. That is reality. And even if we streamline what are currently crippling regulations, extraction operations located here in California will respect workers and the environment far more than they are being respected anywhere else in the world.

On a foundation of new and broad based prosperity, California can then afford to leapfrog other states and nations. California can innovate with transportation tunnels under its cities. California can innovate with passenger drones occupying aerial lanes above its cities. California can fund research into fusion energy and satellite solar power stations. California can solidify its position as one of the wealthiest and most innovative places on earth, but at the same time a place where ordinary families have a chance again.

California can be a place where there is abundance instead of scarcity, pragmatism instead of ideology, and optimism instead of pessimism. These values used to define California. They can do so again. California’s future can be very bright indeed.

This is the conversation California’s candidates for governor should be having.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Globe.

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