Infrastructure
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Water conservation success backfires on policy-makers
A longstanding truism when it comes to needed goods such as water systems, flood control or catastrophic earthquake insurance is that the public wants them but does not want to pay for them. This was confirmed anew by a
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Cap-and-trade share not close to $ bullet train needs
Gov. Jerry Brown has managed to secure a steady source of funding — cap-and-trade fees related to AB 32 — for his $68 billion bullet-train project. It appears that he did so by winning teacher unions’ support with a simply
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How Obama energy rules hurt, help CA
On June 2, President Barack Obama announced his new rules to mothball “dirty” coal power plants so as to reduce carbon-dioxide power plant emissions by 30 percent from their 2005 level. He also set voluntary targets for the percentage of
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Sweeping new legal challenge to bullet train
A massive California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit was filed June 4 in Sacramento Superior Court over the newly certified environmental impact report (EIR) for the bullet-train project segment linking Fresno to Bakersfield. This EIR is supposed to have far more
Read MoreRail board chair Dan Richard responds to critical post
Dan Richard, the chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, sent this to Cal Watchdog in response to my Monday morning post: “In his campaign to stop California from building the nation’s first high-speed rail system, Chris Reed (calwatchdog.com, June 9, 2014)
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State’s Bay Bridge follies will have bullet train encore
When the first stories came out about the problems with the $6.5 billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge construction project, there was a faintly surprised tone to some of the coverage. They can’t get stuff like welds right? Really? But I
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Light-rail love affair: CA pols, media stuck in 1980s
Californians with a green streak are in love with mass transit — at least when it involves rail. Buses are far better at helping people, especially poor people, to and from work. But there’s something about rail and how it
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More dams or regulations to alleviate drought?
American diplomat Dwight Morrow wrote, “Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.” Likewise any policymakers that take credit for restoring rivers for fish and not building dams
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CA utilities outfoxing Cap and Trade law
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Cap and Trade. Part 1 is here. Recent news about California’s cap-and-trade emissions program is like reading a Spy vs. Spy comic strip in an old Mad Magazine, where spies
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Feds funnel money to CA hydrogen cars
The hype surrounding electric cars is running out of gas — and the Department of Energy is directing funds toward hydrogen. Nearly $7 million in federal financial support is headed to five California developers working on hydrogen fuel cells, which emit only
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