Federal wildlife officials gave the first approval last week to Gov. Jerry Brown’s decade-old plan to re-engineer California’s water system by building twin tunnels to ship water around the delta to cities and farms. It’s a regrettable step in a long, costly and politically charged approval process with an uncertain outcome. It doesn’t make sense to spend $17 billion to move water instead of investing in water saving and reuse. Within 72 hours, environmental groups and fishing interests sued, saying the agencies are failing to protect native salmon and allowing the river to degrade further.