The Delta Conveyance Project is a necessary investment to secure California’s water future. Let’s face it, our climate is changing rapidly and becoming more unpredictable – wildfires are larger and more frequent, the seas are rising, droughts are lasting longer and storms are fiercer. The need for this project has never been clearer.
Lobbing another hurdle at California’s $16 billion plan to tunnel underneath the West Coast’s largest estuary, environmentalists on Thursday sued to freeze public funding for the megaproject championed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt writes that a “Grand Bargain” in California water is needed to end the “political culture of deferral” and allow major water projects to advance. On the contrary, what’s needed is an adult regulator that will make hard choices that water users refuse to make.
For at least five years, the state and various water users have postponed balancing the state’s water budget by promising a grand bargain. This promised new grand bargain is not the solution to the aptly named “culture of deferral.” The grand bargain is the current center of deferral.
Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt calls for “a ‘Grand Bargain’ in which all the parties achieve a consensus, confirmed in legislation, to apportion Delta water between exports and an adequate ecological flow to San Francisco Bay.” We agree. Let’s start with a statewide water audit. Leadership now asks, “How much was promised?” That question ignores the reality of how much water actually exists and leads to endless litigation, as Babbitt explained.
At the end of July, Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised plan for bringing long-term water security to all Californians. But his announcement was overshadowed by San Joaquin County and several Delta communities scrambling to confront the worst cases of toxic algae blooms ever seen on local sloughs and rivers.
These green, floating slicks brought a new level of criticism to Newsom’s agribusiness-friendly water proposal. That’s because the governor’s strategy relies in large part on the controversial Sites Reservoir proposal and the even more contentious Delta tunnel proposal. Conservation groups say both projects—particularly the tunnel—could worsen the problem of dangerous algae contamination in regional waterways.
Meanwhile, the state continues to spend large sums of money on both multibillion-dollar projects with little clarity on who will ultimately foot the bill as the COVID-19 pandemic drains evermore revenue from public agencies.
It wasn’t my finest moment.
I was hiking the Owens River Gorge in mid-July. Usually that would be as smart as planting your hands on a stove burner turned to high.
Severe thunderstorms in the eastern Sierra above Bishop prompted a last minute change in plans. And given that the temperature in the Owens Valley that day was predicted to be 20 degrees cooler than the previous day’s high it was the perfect opportunity to take a hike in an area where the heat makes it a seriously insane proposition between June and September.
Before Los Angeles got is claws into Owens Valley to divert snowmelt and draw down the high desert water tables to essentially bleed Eastern California and stunt its economic growth all so the City of Angels could prosper beyond the means of its water basin, the gorge carried water tapped into by farmers and ranchers working the land.
As California confronts increasing water challenges, the most equitable statewide solution from a social justice perspective is the single-tunnel project proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as the Delta Conveyance Project.
More than 27 million Californians rely on imported drinking water conveyed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This imported water also serves millions of acres of local agricultural lands and vital wildlife refuges.
The latest dustup In California’s water wars, as noted in Dan Walters’ commentary, revolves principally around the federal government’s efforts to increase the amount of water supplied to farms and cities by the Central Valley Project, and a breakdown in cooperation between the state and federal government.
The state had been wrestling with the problem for 15 years, and there were hopes it was about to get pinned to the mat. A decade and a half of meetings, lawyerly and political negotiations, and massive public input had led the State Water Resources Control Board to the brink of a momentous decision: California must leave a lot more water in its rivers and streams in order to save the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.
Re “California water war re-ignited”; Dan Walters, April 20, 2020, CalMatters
Dan Walters’ column does a good job describing a potential water battle that all Californians should want to avoid.
The COVID-19 pandemic has rendered uncertain many things we used to take for granted. When can we next go to a restaurant, plan a vacation or go to a baseball game? We can’t afford to add to that list, “will there be food at the grocery store?” Our food supply has been one of the few things we’ve been able to count on in recent months and we need that to continue.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
