California Lawmakers Strike Down Governor's Hopes For Expedited Water Tunnel Project
Facing a range of high-profile water problems, legislators in the nation’s thirstiest state are at odds over a massive project that could impact millions of consumers.
“California’s most hotly contested water proposal suffered a setback … after a budget deal reached between Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers dropped a provision that would have put the project on a regulatory fast track,” The Sacramento Bee reported. “It means more uncertainty for the Delta Conveyance project, a 45-mile tunnel that would pull water from the Sacramento River and pipe it underneath the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the water supply source for 27 million people and millions of acres of farmland.”
Ongoing drought conditions in California are near constant, though the state has fulfilled its consumption requests for the first time since 2006 thanks to a particularly wet winter. While the need for better water management has been clear for decades, this project has garnered fierce contention as well as ardent support.
“The tunnel would run under the delta, robbing farmers and small communities of fresh water that now flows through the West Coast’s largest estuary,” according to The Los Angeles Times. “And it would reduce fresh water for struggling baby salmon, already a threatened species. Newsom and state water officials counter that the tunnel would save the delta as a prime California plumbing facility. It would ensure reliability of water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley farms and coastal cities.”
With such existential water problems and so many stakeholders involved, projects like this in California are often slow to move forward and drawn out for years. While Newsom was stymied in this attempt to fast track it, that does not mean it won’t eventually be approved. But the road ahead appears to be long and steep.
“The project will grind its way forward through the environmental review process, and then you’ll have to grind your way through the litigation,” Jeff Kightlinger, the previous general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, told the Bee. “It’s the nature of doing business in California.”
As that lengthy process plays out, consumers who depend on the dwindling source water in the San Joaquin Valley are certainly hoping for more drought relief in the near future.
To read more about how California is innovating in the face of ongoing drought, visit Water Online’s Water Scarcity Solutions Center.