Issue No. 40 · Letters
A Housekeeping Letter
Some notes on what is coming this spring, a small change to how the comments work, and one apology.
By Adam Reilly 4 min read
I am taking my usual occasional liberty of skipping the essay this week, because there are a few small bits of housekeeping that have accumulated and that I would rather address in one place than as a footnote to something else.
What is coming this spring
I am working on a longer piece on California’s offshore-wind program, which has been the subject of more emails to me than any single topic in the last six months. The piece has taken longer than I expected because I am trying to talk to actual people in the program rather than read more white papers about it. I will get it to you in May.
I am also writing a short series, probably three issues, on the politics of permitting. It will sit at the intersection of climate, urbanism, and the regulatory state, which is the intersection I have been spending most of my reading time at. Some of you will love it. Some of you will write me sharp letters about it. I am ready for both.
The comments are moving
I have, after a great deal of thought, decided to move comments off the issues themselves and into a single weekly thread, posted on Mondays, where readers can discuss the previous day’s issue. The reason is small and human: I was not reading the comments under the issues, and I was reading the comments in the weekly thread, and I would rather you talk to me where I can hear you.
I would rather you talk to me where I can hear you.
An apology
Issue No. 38, on California water rights, contained an error: I stated that the Imperial Irrigation District holds senior water rights of 3.1 million acre-feet from the Colorado River. The correct figure is 3.85 million acre-feet. Several of you wrote in to point this out, including one reader who has worked at IID for the last twenty-six years and was extremely polite about my mistake. I have fixed the issue on the site and added a correction note. I am sorry. The thrust of the piece is not affected, but the number is the number.
Thank you
The list crossed twenty-two thousand subscribers last week. About four thousand of you have been here since the first year, which is to say since the days when I was writing this from a kitchen table in Cleveland to a list of forty-one people, most of them my friends from grad school. I cannot quite get over the fact that I now do this for a living. Thank you. Genuinely.
A new essay will land next Sunday, as usual. I will see you then.
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