We need you to call your state legislators starting today. Click here to find your State Senator and Assemblymember’s contact information.
Why: On May 14, 2025, Governor Newsom released the State Budget May Revise, which included a broad sweeping package of trailer bills that would exempt the Delta Tunnel and water quality standards from adequate environmental review and analysis, and public and judicial oversight. One trailer bill would actually make eminent domain for the project easier to accomplish, and has implications for State sponsored land grabs throughout California.
Hearings on these deeply problematic trailer bills could begin as early as next week.
Background: The State has spent nearly $700 million dollars in past iterations of the project over the last 15 years. Despite significant investment of public dollars, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) has failed to present a complete Operations Plan, and a lawful Environmental Impact Report (EIR). They have also failed to meet consistency standards under the Delta Reform Act, and maintain required water rights to operate the project. Design is about 10% complete, and they continue to lose in court on geotechnical drilling access and the ability to sell bonds. Because DWR has failed to design a project that stewards water resources for ALL Californians in a legal and technically accurate manner, they have pushed the Governor to sponsor trailer bills to change the rules of game mid-process for all ongoing litigation and administrative proceedings. Governor Newsom has fully embraced changing the rules to protect the rich and powerful in California for water resource extraction, even though 62% of Californians said in a recent poll conducted by Goodwin Strategies that they would prefer seeing investment in local water projects, over the tunnel.
We are also in year 18 of a required three-year review of the Bay-Delta Plan. Outdated water quality standards in the Bay-Delta have led to the degradation of our regional waterways and decimation of Delta fisheries, threatening a Delta annual economy of $7 billion. This budget proposal hopes to rush the inequitable, inadequate, and illegal voluntary agreements framework as part of the Bay-Delta Plan, sabotaging the most important planning process for the health of the Bay-Delta estuary, further perpetuating California’s history of excluding tribal, environmental justice communities, and other stakeholders from key decision-making processes. Make no mistake. This is to fill the tunnel with water at the expense of Northern California, leaving average Southern California residents with the bill, all for speculative desert development and hedge fund agriculture.
Jamming policy language in the budget proposal is an inappropriate use of the budget process. In a recent report by the State’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), it recommends “deferring action on both proposals, without prejudice. These policy issues do not have budget implications.” The proposed policy proposals must go through the regular legislative process.
How to Help: Call your legislator today and tell them that Californians cannot afford multiple increases to their water bills to fund an incomplete and illegal project. Remind them that recent polling reveals that Californians overwhelmingly support enhancing local water infrastructure to address challenges like drought, wildfire risks, and climate change, rather than spending taxpayer dollars on a project that would devastate the Bay-Delta ecosystem. Tell them to uphold democracy in statewide resource planning, and to uphold their pledge to make California affordable for all. It is time to bury the Delta tunnel once and for all.
You can click here to find your State Senator and Assemblymember’s contact information. Please call them today.