The State Water Resources Control Board will began public hearings, today, on the controversial California WaterFix. The plan would add three new points of diversion that would move water around the Delta and to pumps near Tracy for transport to southern parts of the state.

Farmers and environmentalists fear the project would mean less water for Central Valley agricultural uses and lessen the health of the Delta’s ecosystem and water quality. Unions and Southern California interests tend to be in favor of the project. Unions argue the project would bring thousands of high-paying jobs.

In California we commonly debate how much water is used by agriculture, the environment, industry and urban users. We talk about water in terms of acre-feet and entire sectors. But we spend less time thinking about water on the individual level.

California’s water conservation mandate helped bring this back into focus, at least for a time. But the information on water usage provided by water utilities on our monthly bills is only a small part of how much water we really use.

This week, Governor Jerry Brown’s controversial water project is back in the public eye. State officials are launching a marathon series of hearings for the “twin tunnels,” as they’re known, that will ultimately decide the fate of the project. What are the Delta water tunnels? They’re two, 30-mile water tunnels that would be built in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, east of the San Francisco Bay Area. Each tunnel would be 40 feet in diameter, larger than the tunnels that carry BART trains under San Francisco Bay. The project, dubbed “California WaterFix,” would be buried 150 feet below ground.