After Tuesday’s vote by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to participate in a giant water delivery project more than 300 miles to the north, Los Angeles is left to wonder: Are we all in on the delta tunnels and their $17 billion price tag ($4.3 billion for Southern California)? Are we all out? Does Mayor Eric Garcetti have a better alternative, and will he try to stop the tunnels project from moving forward?
While I was walking back to my seat in the Metropolitan Water District Board Room after having made comments in support of the California Water Fix, a stubbly dude in a porkpie hat looked up and sneered loudly at me, “A**hole!” One might think that I had just completed a tirade against Pabst Blue Ribbon to provoke such a response, but my actual comments were self-explanatory and follow here: My name is John Mirisch and I serve on the Beverly Hills City Council. My comments reflect my own position, though our Council is supportive of the California Water Fix.
Climate change is all around us. Extreme weather conditions including recent Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria demonstrate the intensity and impact of climate change on our environment.
We’ve seen California and other parts of the West Coast fight large, uncontrollable wildfires and our neighbors in Mexico hit with violent and destructive earthquakes. Earthquakes of that magnitude would be detrimental to our State’s aqueducts and would leave Southern California without water. California only recently saw an end to the severe five-year drought that resulted in a state of emergency due to restricted access to safe and reliable water sources.
Trust.
That is the essence of the $17 billion Delta tunnels project.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted 28-6 Tuesday to move forward with the project, known as the California WaterFix, which would re-engineer the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to send water south to cities and farms.
Three out of five representatives from the city of Los Angeles voted no. Representatives from San Diego either voted no or abstained.
No one is monitoring San Diego’s surface water for hepatitis A, even amid a deadly, human waste-fueled outbreak of the disease that can spread through area waterways.
That’s according to a letter from federal officials to U.S. Rep. Scott Peters, who last month asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take “the immediate steps necessary” to address potential waterborne transmission of the viral liver infection that has killed 18 people and sickened nearly 500 others since November.
