Silicon Valley's largest water authority will vote Tuesday on whether to support Gov. Gavin Newsom's plan to spend $20 billion to construct a large, 45-mile-long tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to move water from Northern California to Southern California to facilitate California.
The board of directors of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose, will achieve this Consider contributing $9.7 million for planning and geotechnical studies for the project, which is amongst California's longest-running and most controversial water proposals.
Newsom's idea is to construct a 36 foot high concrete tunnel Taking water from the Sacramento River about 15 miles south of Sacramento, near the town of Courtland, and sending it about 150 feet deep over 45 miles beneath the marshes and marshes of the Delta to the large State Water Project pumps near Tracy to advertise, thereby achieving the reduction trust in them.
In recent years, courts have ruled that pumps have to be shut down or temporarily turned off at certain times of the yr when salmon, delta smelt and other endangered fish swim near them, disrupting the usage of farms and cities like San Jose, Los Angeles can be restricted. Angeles and San Diego will have the opportunity to receive water. A tunnel drilled beneath the delta's mud would allow the state to maneuver water south in “big bursts” during very wet winters, advocates argue, particularly vital as climate change makes rainstorms wetter and drought years worse .
“Given our changing hydrology, there is a greater risk that we will need to move water during these major events,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, which might oversee construction.
Nemeth found that within the spring of 2023, when California was inundated by atmospheric river storms, 156,000 cubic feet of water per second – an infinite amount, much like the flow of the Columbia River – flowed through the delta and under the Golden Gate Bridge to the ocean. When state and federal pumps near Tracy reach maximum capability, they will pump about 15,000 cfs. The tunnel would help California more reliably move more water south, to the San Luis Reservoir, aquifers and other places, she said.
Had the tunnel been constructed during atmospheric river storms last spring, it might have moved 941,000 acre feet of water – enough for 9.8 million those that would otherwise have flowed into the ocean, she added.
Opponents of the project, which include environmental groups and Delta counties reminiscent of Contra Costa, call the project a Southern California water grab that takes an excessive amount of freshwater, degrades water quality within the Delta and San Francisco Bay, and harms salmon and other fish and wildlife populations .
“The Delta Tunnel would burden our infrastructure and communities with more than a decade of unbearable construction, ultimately increasing water salinity and harmful algae blooms and causing the Sacramento River to temporarily backflow,” wrote Contra Costa County Supervisor Ken Carlson . in a letter to the Santa Clara Valley Water District last week that was also signed by supervisors from Solano, Yolo, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties.
The project has been around for generations. In 1982, former Gov. Jerry Brown called it “the peripheral channel.” This yr, voters rejected it in a statewide election that became a water fight between Northern California and Southern California. Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger each tried unsuccessfully to bring it back, and Brown, who renamed it the “California Water Fix,” pushed for a two-tunnel version a decade ago but left office in 2019 following the large Westlands Water's faltering district in Fresno has pulled out of the partnership.
Newsom took office in 2019 and scaled down the plan to only a tunnel. He stressed the necessity within the face of climate change and against earthquakes that would destroy the delta's dikes.
In December, the state certified its final environmental impact statement. Also this month, Southern California's massive Metropolitan Water District, which supplies water to twenty million people, voted to contribute $141 million to its remaining studies.
There are 18 agencies which have agreed to be partners within the project and canopy the prices. The goal is to interrupt ground in 2027 and complete construction in 2042, Nemeth said.
The big query for these local authorities — whether to finance the $20 billion construction cost and who can pay for overruns — will are available 2026 or 2027. The Santa Clara Valley Water District's share can be about $650 million.
Two other Bay Area water agencies, the Alameda County Water District in Fremont and the Zone 7 Water Agency in Livermore, also recently endorsed the project and agreed to fund a few of its studies. East Bay MUD and Contra Costa Water District aren’t partners within the project.
Newsom called the project one in all his top priorities in the ultimate two years of his term.
In 2019, the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board voted 4-3 to support the plan and contribute $11 million for its planning and environmental studies.
“The delta poses a lot of risks,” said Cindy Kao, the county’s import water manager. “Sea level rise, climate change, seismic issues and environmental issues. This will make our water supply more resilient and reliable.”
Critics say water agencies across the state should do more to enhance local supplies, reminiscent of through stormwater capture, recycled water and environmental protections, somewhat than counting on water transported a whole bunch of miles away.
“It's a really risky and unsafe project,” Katja Irving, conservation officer for the Guadalupe Regional Group, told the Sierra Club. “We will spend a lot of money on it before we know whether it will be feasible. And we could instead spend that money on repairing local dams or reducing water rates.”
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