The August 2026 final draft of the State Water Resources Control Board’s (SWRCB) “Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed” has been released. Written comments will be accepted through September 18, and the board will also take oral comments at the October 28-29, 2026 meeting where the SWRCB may formally adopt the plan. Anyone...

If energy powers modern civilization, then water gives it life. And in California, for at least the last 20 years, with escalating severity, life has been tough. There isn’t enough water to go around. Water scarcity is not being forced upon Californians by climate change. Like so many other fundamental challenges Californians must endure –...

When a public policy decision is flawed, and the reasons it is flawed are simple and obvious, and the consequences are huge and costly, the appropriate response for a concerned observer is to call attention to the looming debacle. Not just once, but over and over and over again. An example of an impending economic...

Dams and aqueducts on the Colorado River make civilization possible in the American Southwest. But for the last 20 years, as a prolonged drought has gripped the region, withdrawals from the river have averaged 15 million acre-feet per year, while inflows into Lake Mead and Lake Powell have averaged only 12 million acre feet per year. For the first...

On February 21, the California State Water Resources Control Board waived environmental regulations in order to permit more storage in Central Valley reservoirs. This came a week after Governor Gavin Newsom temporarily suspended environmental laws that prevent reservoir storage if flow through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta falls below 58,000 acre feet per day. A guest opinion piece...

  Borrowing a page from the More Water Now campaign, which unsuccessfully attempted earlier this year to qualify a water funding initiative for the November 2022 ballot, Governor Newsom announced a new water supply strategy on August 11. Perhaps with the presidency in mind, or perhaps because he really means it, Newsom’s remarks were surprisingly accommodating towards those of us who...

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...

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...

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...

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...