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Around the glitter of the holidays, Gavin Newsom’s ambitious proposal to engineer a water tunnel under the San Joaquin Delta moved a step closer to reality; but there are alternatives to the controversial tunnels, including one proposed by U.S. Representative John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove).
On Dec. 21, the California Department of Water Resources, or DWR, announced its certification of the environmental impact report for the Delta Conveyance Project. Governor Gavin Newsom’s $16 billion plan is designed to draw freshwater from tributaries of the Sierra Nevada and deliver it south to satisfy the thirst of greater Los Angeles.
From two intakes in the north delta, 3,000 cubic feet of water per second will flow for 45 miles through a 36-foot-wide tunnel buried 150-feet below ground. At the Bethany Reservoir, near the town of Tracy, it will be pumped up to join the surface waters in the California Aqueduct. From there, the water will ride in the flume over mountains and valleys to Southern California.
While the governor’s plan has seized headlines, Garamendi believes building a tunnel is a “multibillion-dollar boondoggle.”
“As I told the six previous governors and now Governor Newsom, this tunnel will never be built,” Garamendi said in a statement last week. “Tunneling under the Delta to export more water to Southern California risks collapsing the Delta’s earthen levees and inundating this iconic working landscape with saltwater.”
Garamendi, whose family grows pears and raises cattle in the Delta community of Walnut Grove, has long pushed an alternative no-tunnel plan. His proposal, Little Sip, Big Gulp: A Water Plan for All of California, builds on pre-existing land engineering.
“While I share the Governor’s enthusiasm for modernizing California’s water supply infrastructure, forcing a tunnel on Delta residents ignores better ways to meet our state’s future water needs,” he said.
According to Garamendi’s office, the Port of Sacramento Ship Channel could be deepened and used as a line of freshwater conveyance instead of the tunnels. But they’re building an expensive tunneling system instead of using an existing intake and existing conveyance infrastructure.
Parts of Garamendi’s comprehensive water plan, which has been under development since 2015, have already been adopted by the state. Construction begins this year on the new Sites Reservoir, an off-stream holding pool on the west-side of the Sacramento Valley that can capture and save water during high runoff. The Los Vaqueros reservoir in Contra Costa County will also be expanded.
The Garamendi plan also calls for broader use of recycled and desalinated water, including in agriculture, which would require a change in public perception towards recycling. He also believes the levies, some 50-years-old, should be repaired.
Rather than dig a tunnel under the delta and threaten the levies’ collapse, he calls for fixing them through new funding policies. Some levies were built by private landowners to the benefit of everyone downstream, according to Garamendi.
“For years, federal and state water contractors have depended upon these levees for the delivery of water to their fields and cities without paying to maintain them,” his plan states. “It’s time for everyone who benefits from the Delta levees to pay to maintain them.”
Efforts to stop the tunnel project flared mid-December, when the state released its final Environmental Impact Report on Dec. 8 and then certified it 13 days later.
Environmental groups were joined by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and the Delta Counties Coalition in petitioning for 60 days of public review of the final report.
In an email clarification on Jan. 3, the DWR said the public comment period concluded when DWR Director Karla Nemeth certified the report Dec. 21.
In Congress, Garamendi worked to block the Delta Tunnel at every turn by prohibiting any federal permitting or funding. Last February, Garamendi reintroduced the Stop the Delta Tunnel Act (H.R.924).
The DWR is no longer accepting public comment, but they will collect public input around the Community Benefits Program to help identify and implement commitments to those affected by the project. The State Water Board will also conduct public engagement around the Change in Point of Diversion. That is a petition process required by water rights holders seeking to change the conditions of their permit.
