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Representatives of California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration began making their pitch for approval Tuesday to build a pair of massive water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

They propose building the tunnels – each four stories high and running 35 miles long – to send Sacramento River water south to millions of residents and vast farmland in dry regions of the state. The project is estimated to cost $15.7 billion.

By the time the Sacramento River winds its more-than-400-mile course from the slopes of Mount Shasta past the state capital, it’s well into its leisurely stride, running slowly by fields of sweet corn, tomatoes and alfalfa.

But this lazy stretch of river, just south of Sacramento, is a metaphorical whitewater. The rural Sacramento County town of Hood, at the north end of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is where state and federal authorities have planned the starting point of California’s hotly debated tunnel project.

California decision makers are at a historic crossroads in the long-standing California water crisis. The outcome will permanently alter the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. Your voice can steer these decisions in the right direction and now is the time to speak up.

On Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board will begin a series of hearings that will help determine whether the governor’s proposed twin tunnels project will continue to move forward.

 

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.