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Patrick Atwater
@patwater
I had fun riffing with GPT on this little ode to the ditch we dug in my hometown, a near decade long odyssey. "Ten years. That’s how long it took to build a simple stormwater recharge ditch in my hometown north of L.A. Not a dam. Not a desalination plant. Just a basic diversion channel—a design older than civilization itself. The kind of thing you could dig in a single day with the right crew and a shovel. And that’s what happened this weekend. Over 50 volunteers came out to help finish the project—more than ten times the usual turnout for efforts like this. Neighbors. Students. Staff. People who just wanted to help California work a little better. It was beautiful. And humbling. And a little surreal.
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Patrick Atwater
@patwater
Because we’ve had the plans for years. We had support. We had funding. The groundwater recharged by that ditch costs about five times less than imported water. And still—it took a decade to navigate the maze of permits, jurisdictions, and inherited friction. That’s how so much of California breaks down—not in dramatic failure, but in slow-motion bureaucracy. Everyone’s trying. But no one can see the whole picture. What finally made the difference wasn’t just the volunteers (though they were incredible). It was a protocol. A shared process. A simple way of coordinating across silos, aligning schedules, unlocking action. Not a grand reform. Not a new law. Just a way to move. That’s the pattern I keep seeing again and again: Good ideas, good funding, and good people aren’t enough. Without a protocol—without a path—we get stuck."
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