SoCal Water Wars: Why this newsletter is important and how to help it grow

SoCal Water Wars monitors policy makers and professionals while advocating for the reasonable use of water and environmental justice

“Think globally, act locally.” — René Dubos, Pulitzer prize winning biologist, humanist, and environmentalist

By John Earl

On April 16, 2023, I asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT the following question about SoCal Water Wars:

John Earl writes a newsletter called socalwaterwars.substack.com. Please explain his writing style.

The response was:

As an AI language model, I cannot make subjective judgments about a person's writing style, but I can analyze their writing patterns based on the text available.

Based on a brief analysis of socalwaterwars.substack.com, John Earl's writing style appears to be informative and analytical. He provides detailed insights and analysis on the ongoing water crisis in Southern California, focusing on water management and policies, as well as environmental and social issues related to water scarcity.

His writing is generally straightforward and factual, with occasional personal opinions and insights. He uses charts, graphs, and visual aids to support his arguments and enhance readers' understanding of complex issues.

Overall, John Earl's writing style seems to be focused on delivering accurate, in-depth information and analysis to his readers, rather than entertaining or engaging them with a particular writing style or voice.

I believe that’s an accurate generalization. Now, here are the details in my own words.

I am an investigative journalist who has reported on Southern California water-management issues for over 16 years. I was the only journalist during much of that time to regularly attend and report in-depth on local (Orange County) water districts and their obsession with the proposed Huntington Beach, CA., Poseidon Ocean Desalination project.

My extensive explanatory and investigative reporting on that topic (please browse the archives of this newsletter) informed and motivated public citizens to act, and influenced mainstream media reporting, helping to defeat one of the world's great water-project scams, protect marine life, and save ratepayers billions of dollars.

Socalwaterwars.substack.com evolved from the Surf City Voice, a local investigative news blog I started from Huntington Beach in 2010, and before that the OC Voice, a print newspaper that I co-owned and edited from 2006 - 2009.

SoCal Water Wars covers water-management issues, including climate change, drought, government/corporate transparency, and environmental justice issues through a Southern California lens but within the context of state, national, and international events.

SoCal Water Wars is a valuable source of information for anyone interested in the politics of water management, including policy makers, water professionals, and citizen advocates.

Stories in SoCal Water Wars usually emerge from three overlapping and often conflicting areas of Southern California water management:

• the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and member agencies;

• in Orange County, the Municipal Water District of Orange County and the Orange County Water District; they are listed as one because their work directly overlaps;

• the San Diego County Water Authority and member agencies.

But SoCal Water Wars is about more than conflicts between water districts—over water rights and management policies. It’s about the conflicts between their shared business model—some experts call it a death spiral—and the natural environment that sustains all life on the planet Earth, including human beings.

SoCal Water Wars is about how we in Southern California try to limit and adapt to the effects of human-induced climate change in a just, equitable, and sustainable manner or suffer the consequences of refusing to change our ways.

Growing SoCal Water Wars

In the past year, subscriptions to SoCal Water Wars have more than doubled to almost 700 and will reach 1,000 in the next few months at the current rate.

Combined with non-subscribers referred by sharing on social media, there are up to 1,000 readers viewing (reading) each article published.

Detailed research shows that over 90 percent of subscriber and non-subscriber readers are highly targeted; that is, they include water-management officials (elected and staff), other local elected officials (usually on city council), appointed state officials, environmental justice activists, ratepayer activists, academics, scientists, industry consultants, farmers, and other journalists—mostly from throughout Southern California but also from Northern California and the Four-Corners states.

My current goal is to build the subscriber list to at least 2,000 by January 2024.

To do that I need to publish regularly and more often. Currently, I try to publish at least one article every week. But that isn’t always possible, due to the intense amount of research required for most of the stories I publish.

How wonderful it would be to pay for additional environmental journalists on a freelance or full time basis.

But for now, my main concern is keeping myself with food, clothes, and shelter so I can just keep researching, writing, and publishing as many important stories about water as possible.

I chose substack as my journalism platform because it’s currently the best vehicle available to allow for the growth of independent journalism, unfettered by the chains of corporate advertising and myopic publishers.

That’s a win/win situation for me and my readers.

So, please, if you like the content of this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. If you’re interested, but still not sure, simply click the button below and sign up for a free subscription to try it out.

Gift subscriptions will also help:

And, finally, sharing SoCal Water Wars is a great way to inform others about water management issues in Southern California and will help build my subscriber base.

Yours,
John Earl

Member Society of Environmental Journalists