A month after California’s water regulator gave its seal of approval to a controversial water infrastructure project that could replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the plan is coming under renewed legal fire.
California has long had a mismatch. “Where the waterfalls and where the people are. Much of the water, about two-thirds, fall in the Sierra Nevada, but most of the population is in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, along the coast or in Southern California,” said Carrie Buckman, Environmental Program Manager with Delta Conveyance.
Will the fifth time be the charm for California’s decades-long effort to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta so that more Northern California water can be transported to Southern California?
Don’t count on it.
Last week, the state Department of Water Resources released a draft environmental impact report on the latest iteration of the 57-year-long effort to change the Delta’s role in water supply, a 45-mile-long tunnel officially named the “Delta Conveyance.”
In a 5-2 vote, the Zone 7 Water Agency Board approved the expenditure of $2.8 million as the agency’s share for the next phase of planning on the Delta Conveyance. The conveyance, a Gov. Gavin Newsom proposal, would reduce his predecessor Gov. Jerry Brown’s Twin Tunnels project to one tunnel under the Delta. On Brown’s Twin Tunnels project, Zone 7 paid $280,000 as a placeholder to be sure the agency reserved a spot if the agency wanted to take part.
Local water agencies aren’t buying into the new version of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta “twin tunnels” project, and Santa Barbara County members of the State Water Project voted Thursday to opt out entirely.
The California Department of Water Resources’ Cal Waterfix project, also known as the twin tunnels, aimed to increase State Water Project reliability by building two 40-foot-diameter tunnels to move water under the Delta instead of through it.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
