|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
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,” said Garamendi in a statement Tuesday. “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 Wednesday, 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.
Newsom’s proposal to satisfy Los Angeles’s ever increasing appetite for water sounds like a cautionary tale of unexpected consequences. So many things could go wrong with a massive tunnel buried underground with water for Los Angeles.
Los Angeles County already accounts for one quarter of the State’s population, and the squalor there has reached epic proportions. So let’s send more water down there and make it even worse, while jeopardizing the resource for those of us in NorCal and our Central Valley agriculture. Courts have told them that they cannot destroy the Owens River Valley, and now that Arizona is taking its entitlement to the ever diminishing supply of Colorado River Water, they are trying to figure out how to continue to “grow” taking more water from the North as their other sources “dry up.”
I oppose it. Water for LA makes no sense. California had a 97B surplus in 2022, was in the whole 36B in spring and in November was about 56B.
Newsom could have seen it coming before November, has one month to fix at and the plan is mostly use reserves. Then in November, he terms out, leaving someone else to fix it.
The Valley needs water for crops or affordable housing. First it was drought (OK) and smelt in the Delta. The Valley doesn’t vote for Newsom.
I long for a conservative voice in Legislature. Not in my lifetime.
Those who voted for the current clown of a governor get what they deserve.
Malcolm Hex:
Newsom is only the tip of the iceberg. You need to add-in 90% of the two Houses of our Legislature, with their incessant, unconstitutional “new laws” that trample both the US and State Constitutions (like legislating what toys our retailers can sell for openers), and our gaggle of incompetent mayors and district attorneys who routinely fail to effectively deal with the rampant crime wave we are currently experiencing( and the excrement and needles on our sidewalks). And you might add our public agencies and public utilities, that see us all as a flock of ATMs. Today, our PG&E and EBMUD bills are more than our mortgage (and all they do is ask for rate increases,PG&E is just gotten one with another scheduled for March), and as a consequence, more than a million of our fellow citizens have moved elsewhere. Then there’s our outrageous property taxes. We own a second home in Nevada. It’s a very nice place that has increased in value by nearly 100% since we purchased it in 2019. Property taxes are $325.00 a quarter! And you know what, everyone on the street where it is located is from California! And the kicker is that people are nicer there. Our next door neighbor is a contractor. In a wind storm, some shingles on our roof were blown off. He bought replacements to match and replaced them. We found out from another neighbor that he had done the work. We attempted to pay him, and he refused saying “we’re neighbors and it’s what neighbors do for one another!” California has been turned into a crap hole by Newsom and his ilk. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and yet our “citizens” are still in search of the free lunch, and Newsom & Co. are there to offer it ( until they run out of money, which they are poised to do). Oh, I almost forgot our “public education system” that is failing miserably to educate our children while they spend tax dollars on “equity!”
Well said, Paul. The Democrats have created a mess in so many areas. And the slimy governor leads the way, along with all of the other tools we call law makers up there in Sacramento.
Gavin Newsom, Scott Weiner, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell are prime examples of California’s weakness when it comes to politicians. And this weakness trickles down. Look at Oakland. What an absolute joke. Crime is everywhere and nothing is being done about it. Oakland’s current mayor and district attorney have done absolutely nothing to combat crime. If this trend continues, people are going to start administering their own brand of justice – which leads to civil disorder. Scary thought, but people can only take so much.
The big question is, regardless of political party: Where are our true statesmen/women? Where are those people that we can all be proud of to run our state?
Malcolm:
You mention Adam Schiff. Do you know that he “grew up” in Danville? He came here with his parents from Massachusetts as a child, and graduated from Monte Vista High School.
This is how California has been ruined. People like Schiff are transplants from the Northeastern States and now, having taken California from the #1 state of my childhood to dead last in almost any metric you pick, are now back flushing to places like Colorado ( which also used to be a wonderful place to live).
Our second home in Douglas County, Nevada. The “outbound” are bypassing Northern Nevada, because there is no welcome mat out there. The street on which our home is located is occupied by all retired military families who have fled California. No state income tax and low property taxes, plus decent neighbors is the draw. We are amazed at how polite everyone is there.
And to your last point, we have a dearth of intelligent, well-founded people interested in doing good in public office today. They get elected and retire on the job. No one retires from politics poor today.