HomeTop StoriesSanta Clara Valley Water Districts votes to support the Delta Tunnel Project

Santa Clara Valley Water Districts votes to support the Delta Tunnel Project

The Santa Clara Valley Water District met Tuesday to consider whether to continue supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s controversial Delta water tunnel project.

The plan is to take water from the Sacramento River, above the Delta, and pipe it underground to pumps near Tracy, eventually destined for Central Valley farms and water consumers in Southern California. Over the years it has had its beginnings and ends, but it now appears to be moving forward again with quite a costly planning process.

“To date, 12 agencies have voted to support these planning funds, and Valley Water is the 13th to consider doing so,” Carrie Buckman of the CA Dept of Water Resources told board members.

Valley Water would be one of the recipients of the water that would be pumped and stored into the San Luis Reservoir. To remain part of the project, they considered whether to pay $9.6 million over the next two years to continue the planning and permitting process.

The agency estimates that their share of the construction costs would be at least $650 million. But the total price of the project continues to rise, from $15 billion to $20 billion in the past four years. And the state admits that it will only get more expensive.

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“Costs will continue to rise, there is no doubt about that,” said Graham Bradner of DWR. “This won’t be the last estimate we make. This was really to support the benefit-cost analysis of the project.”

“It’s going to cost a lot of money,” Karen Mann said. “If they think it will only be $20 billion, I bet it will be $40 to $50 billion.”

Mann lives in Discovery Bay and is president of the Save the California Delta Alliance. She won’t share in the costs or the water, but she and her neighbors worry about what will happen if the state tries to sink a tunnel under the Delta, 45 miles to the pump station.

“We’re talking about the gamble of digging a circular tunnel 36 feet wide, under peat moss, under unstable land. I don’t see a problem with that, do you?” she said sarcastically.

But there are also concerns about the environment and water quality for the Delta. And residents object to the idea of ​​their water being siphoned before it even reaches the Delta to supply farmers and people in Los Angeles.

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“The lack of reservoirs in Southern California doesn’t give residents of Northern California and the Delta much encouragement,” Mann says. “Hey, they need to help us. They’re not saving nearly as much water as we have over the last 15 to 20 years. We’d like to see some support for this. Don’t just give them the water.” .”

Valley Water already draws water from the Delta. This plan would make it safer in the event of a seismic failure of the levees, and because of the greater pumping capacity, it would allow more water to be captured and stored when Delta flows are high, such as during last winter’s heavy rains.

“So we expect more precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow. We expect more extreme drought and flood cycles. And we’ve seen that even in the last three or four years,” DWR’s Buckman said.

The original project was proposed by Governor Jerry Brown in 1982 as a “peripheral canal.” He brought it back decades later as a two-tunnel project. The project has since changed to a single tunnel that will follow a different route, south along the I-5 freeway.

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Valley Water considers it an insurance policy, albeit an expensive one, and by a vote of 6-1 they approved spending the money to stay in the game. But they know there are no guarantees. The project has previously stalled as the economic winds shifted in the ever-changing political climate.

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