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Local water officials have endorsed a plan to fix the system which delivers water to the Santa Clarita Valley from Northern California at a cost to mom-and-pop SCV ratepayer of $20 a month. The project hammered out by state officials these past 10 years to repair the water conveyance system is called the California WaterFix.  It used to be called the Bay Delta Conservation Project. Members of the Castaic Lake Water Agency board unanimously approved a recommendation Wednesday to back the WaterFix project which calls for an extensive overhaul of the water delivery system.

A bloc of San Joaquin farmers tentatively endorsed the Delta tunnels project Thursday, becoming the first significant agricultural group to support the struggling plan. But the level of support from members of the Kern County Water Agency, which serves much of the $7 billion-a-year farm economy at the southern end of the valley, was less than wholehearted. An estimated 48.5 percent of the agency’s water users said they’re interested in helping pay for the tunnels, which works out to about $1 billion in financial support.

Governor Brown’s proposal to fix California’s water problem by building massive tunnels to shunt Sacramento River water past the Bay/Delta and south to Los Angeles water consumers and San Joaquin Valley farmers isn’t going to fix anything, let alone make our water supply more reliable. The state admits the tunnels will not supply any new water. The proposal is replete with misconceptions and misrepresentations, and it has a false underlying basic premise — that there is enough water in California to meet our needs if only we could bypass the Delta.

The Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District, the country’s largest water district, on Tuesday cemented support for California Governor Jerry Brown’s contentious Bay Delta water project, agreeing to pay an estimated $4.3 billion, primarily through rate hikes on millions of Southern Californians. The MWD’s decision to fund up to 25.9 percent of the $17 billion California WaterFix, which would divert water from the West Coast’s largest estuary through two 40-foot-wide 35-mile-long tunnels, comes as a boost to a project beset by environmental and financial uncertainties.

During the recent five-year drought, residents and businesses in Los Angeles were saved from disaster by water that was imported to Southern California from the mountains and rivers of Northern California via the State Water Project and the Metropolitan Water District (MWD). In fact, imported water from MWD is the reason we have averted disaster twice during the last 10 years.