For Immediate Release: 12/8/23
Contact: Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, 209-479-2053, barbara@restorethedelta.org
SACRAMENTO – Today, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) will release a final Environmental Impact Report for Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed Delta Conveyance Project (Delta Tunnel).
The proposal would construct new water intake facilities on the Sacramento River in the North Delta to fill a single tunnel with diverted freshwater flows. That water would be shipped to large farming operations and water wholesalers south of the Delta. The Delta Conveyance project would divert up to 6,000 cubic feet of water per second. The project is estimated to cost between $16-40 billion and won’t be completed until at least 2040.
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director, Restore the Delta said:
“Governor Newsom’s proposed Delta Tunnel, as outlined in this new EIR, is another failure of state water officials to imagine alternative approaches in a climate-impacted California. This is sadly just another Zombie version of the Peripheral Canal idea that was rejected by California voters way back in 1982. And DWR seems to have learned nothing since California Governor Brown’s Twin Tunnel (WaterFix) died in 2019.
“What is new is the claim that Newsom’s Tunnel is a climate project. But that argument is built on incomplete data and faulty analysis. The big pipe engineering solutions of the last century are no longer the way forward in California water’s climate-changed reality. We need more underground storage in agricultural regions and more regional stormwater collection and water recycling in our cities. The new Delta Tunnel plan was out of date for climate change science when it was released in July 2022. If completed in 2040 it will be obsolete then too.
“Meanwhile, California will have spent billions on a project the state will be unable to use as Delta water levels rise or when fish need that water for survival during drought years.
“Instead, we should invest in the resilience projects that reduce reliance on water exports from the Delta. Southern California has been leading the way with projects that increase efficiency, water recycling, and increase local self-sufficiency.”
Think Regional, Act Local – Metropolitan Water District of Southern CA
L.A. County aims to collect billions more gallons of local water by 2045, Los Angeles Times, 12/6/23
Tunnel will Have Profound Impacts on the San Francisco Bay-Delta
Reviewing the prior Draft EIR,Restore the Delta identified 17 significant and unavoidable impacts of the proposed Tunnel project on the environment. Among these impacts will be loss of prime agricultural farmland, loss of local non-tribal cultural resources, transportation and air quality impacts, and painful loss of tribal cultural resources. Restore the Delta will be checking to see if any further mitigation has been developed for these identified impacts.
The plan still largely ignores the project’s impacts on Delta urban environmental justice communities, and how construction will ruin small Delta farming towns, and the natural resources essential to the cultural and spiritual practices of Delta tribes.
It is clear from recent hearings at the State Water Resources Control Board that the voluntary agreements are DWR’s water operation plan during tunnel construction and for eventual operation of the tunnel. The tunnel, the voluntary agreements, and the Bay-Delta Plan are all modeled on historical data because the state is far behind in developing adequate climate water modeling for the future.
Should the state eventually be forced to adopt a scientifically credible update to Delta outflow and other Delta water quality objectives in the Bay-Delta Plan, the new tunnel, costing many tens of billions of dollars, will sit empty in dry years for Delta flows and fish restoration as required by law. Eventually, aridification will render the tunnel dry for long periods of time.
Federal EPA is Watching
In August of 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a decision accepting for investigation a civil rights complaint filed by a coalition of tribes and environmental justice organizations over the California State Water Resources Control Board’s discriminatory mismanagement of water quality in California’s San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed. One of the remedies requested by the coalition was that no Delta Tunnel should proceed without a completed Delta Plan in place first. Federal officials are watching the Tunnel planning closely because of this action. The State Water Board has still not completed the Bay-Delta plan and hearings are continuing.
Delta water crisis linked to California’s racist past, tribes and activists say – Los Angeles Times, 5/26/22
EPA to investigate California State Water Board for alleged civil rights violations – Los Angeles Times, 8/11/23