Water

The Abundance Choice – Part 10: Time to Stop Wasting Wastewater

The Abundance Choice – Part 10: Time to Stop Wasting Wastewater

Editor’s note: This is the tenth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” If there is any source of water that ought to be optimized, it is the wastewater produced by...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 9: Can Reservoirs be Part of the Solution?

The Abundance Choice – Part 9: Can Reservoirs be Part of the Solution?

Editor’s note: This is the ninth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” In May 1957, Harvey Banks, then director of the California Department of Water Resources, submitted “The California Water...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 8: The Union Factor

The Abundance Choice – Part 8: The Union Factor

Editor’s note: This is the eighth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” The moment we met Robbie Hunter, then president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, we knew we...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 7: An Environmentalist Juggernaut

The Abundance Choice – Part 7: An Environmentalist Juggernaut

Editor’s note: This is the seventh article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” Environmentalists in California, who constitute much of the vanguard of environmentalism in the world, have normalized extremism. The...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 6: Biased, Hostile Media

The Abundance Choice – Part 6: Biased, Hostile Media

Editor’s note: This is the sixth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” You can say this for Michael Hiltzik, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times columnist for the Los Angeles...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 5: The Fractured Farmers

The Abundance Choice – Part 5: The Fractured Farmers

Editor’s note: This is the fifth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” “We cannot support your initiative if you include the Delta Tunnel as an eligible project. And to be...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice: The Complete Series

The Abundance Choice: The Complete Series

Note: This webpage is dedicated to the complete The Abundance Choice series by Edward Ring. In this series, Edward Ring, a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, examines California’s ongoing water crisis and the many years of failed water policies that got us here. Ring outlines the challenges facing California’s leaders...

By Editorial Staff

The Abundance Choice – Part 4: Crafting a Water Initiative

The Abundance Choice – Part 4: Crafting a Water Initiative

Editor’s note: This is the fourth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” To be fair, Assemblyman Devon Mathis didn’t come up with the idea of allocating a percentage of the...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 3: The Mechanics of Ballot Initiatives

The Abundance Choice – Part 3: The Mechanics of Ballot Initiatives

Editor’s note: This is the third article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” By the spring of 2021, it was obvious the California State Legislature would not change its inadequate approach...

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 2: The Problems with Indoor Water Rationing

The Abundance Choice – Part 2: The Problems with Indoor Water Rationing

Editor’s note: This is the second article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” Perhaps the biggest example of misguided water policy in California are the escalating restrictions on indoor water consumption....

By Edward Ring

The Abundance Choice – Part 1: California’s Failing Water Policies

The Abundance Choice – Part 1: California’s Failing Water Policies

Editor’s note: This is the first article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” In October and again in December, as the third severe drought this century was entering its third year,...

By Edward Ring

California’s green conundrum

California’s green conundrum

In 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the landmark AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act.” Determined to leave a legacy that would ensure he remained welcome among the glitterati of Hollywood and Manhattan, Schwarzenegger may not have fully comprehended the forces he unleashed. Under AB 32, California was required to “reduce its [greenhouse gas]...

By Edward Ring

Newsom’s true opponents? Water and fire

Newsom’s true opponents? Water and fire

Not quite one year ago, Gavin Newsom did something that took political courage. It was also the right thing to do. He removed from one of the state’s local water boards one of the most outspoken critics of a desalination plant proposed for Huntington Beach. Unlike critics of desalination (once referred to as desalinization, and swiftly being...

By Edward Ring

Fixing California – Part three: Achieving water abundance

Fixing California – Part three: Achieving water abundance

Editor’s note: This is the third article in a nine-part series on how to fix California. Read the first article in the series here, and the second here. As Californians face another drought, the official consensus response is more rationing. Buy washers that don’t work very well. Install more flow restrictors. Move down from a 50 gallon per...

By Edward Ring