With 57,000 navigable waterways that draw 12 million visitors a year to its marinas, wineries and small towns, the Delta is California’s first National Heritage Area. And the tunnel gives you a direct line straight to the pump station with the capacity that you’re looking for.”Ĭrossing Alameda, Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano and Yolo counties, the Delta is formed where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers come together and flow into the San Francisco Bay. “We’ve got a system that’s completely clogged up and very difficult to pump water through the Delta with all the restrictions that are on it. It’s “not a heart transplant, but a heart bypass,” Meyers said. State officials hope that by piping water from the north and pumping from the existing facilities in the south, the state can capture more water during wet spells to tide water agencies over during droughts. It’s a long way off,” said Tony Meyers, executive director of the state’s Delta Conveyance Office.” So there’s a lot of time to amend and adjust.” “It’s not like we’re going to turn dirt tomorrow, and we’re gonna set this thing up, and we’re gonna start moving water next year. That number is likely to climb, given inflation and rising construction costs. The state would issue bonds, but public water providers that ultimately sign on to receive the tunnel’s water will be on the hook for paying back the costs, estimated at just under $16 billion in 2020 dollars. In all, obtaining various permits and designing the prject could take six to eight years, and construction could add another another twelve years, state officials said. Next steps include public comment, finalizing the preferred route and deciding whether to move forward. The first step is a draft environmental impact review expected later this summer, which would consider all of the alternatives, addressing the amounts of water the three routes would divert from the Delta and how they would affect water quality, the ecosystem and fish. The tunnel would be no quick fix: It would have to clear a gauntlet of permits, hearings and environmental review, including from federal agencies. The prolonged efforts to build tunnels could be called “the epicenter of the California water wars for almost 60 years,” Gartrell said. The costly proposals have been controversial ever since, with critics concerned that bypassing the Delta could worsen salinity and stagnation, and that years of construction could drive residents and tourists from the region. “It all depends on what the rules are for how it gets operated.”Įfforts to funnel water around the Delta have been in the works for decades under various names, dating back to the peripheral canal first proposed in the 1960s and rejected by California voters in the 1980s. What would a Delta tunnel mean for California? “Ask me that after the EIR (environmental impact review) comes out,” said Greg Gartrell, former water manager with Contra Costa Water District and a consulting engineer. The massive system transports water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to agencies and irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California, the Central Coast and the Bay Area. The goal, according to state officials, is to make the State Water Project, which provides water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland, less vulnerable to rising seas, earthquakes and the extreme droughts and precipitation shifts of climate change. The tunnel proposal, still in the early stages of environmental review, is the latest, scaled-down iteration of the contentious twin tunnels project, which Newsom scrapped in 2019 in favor of a single tunnel. Gavin Newsom would take water from the Sacramento River and bypass the vast Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, funneling the flows directly to pumps in the south Delta or straight to Bethany Reservoir at the northern end of the California Aqueduct. Known as the Delta Conveyance Project, a tunnel supported by Gov. California water officials are poised to release the first environmental review of a controversial project to replumb the Delta - a plan in the works for decades that has alternately been called a water grab or a critical update to shore up state supplies.
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