SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Is California wasting its water? The state had a historic winter and the ABC10 Weather Team is investigating where the water is going and if we're wasting it. In Part Four, Meteorologist Brenden Mincheff takes a closer look at Delta water tunnel project.
A battle remains underway in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Delta.
For decades, Delta residents and the state have been unable to agree on a plan to transport water from the rainy but rural northern part of the state down to the heavily populated, dry southern half.
The current Delta Conveyance Project wants to put a tunnel underneath the Delta to transport water. Former Governor Jerry Brown proposed two tunnels and Gov. Gavin Newsom narrowed it down to one.
To understand its significance and the controversy surrounding it, you need to look at the Delta.
“We have 700 miles of waterways across this, the five-county area of that we call the Delta. That's a trip down to Los Angeles and back basically in this one area,” said Jay Ziegler, Delta Watermaster with the State Water Resources Control Board. “This is the source of water for the state and federal water projects, also the Bay Area, and all the communities in the Delta and all the farms that exist across 700,000 acres.”
Water from across Northern California from the Sacramento River to Sierra snowmelt to the San Joaquin River flows into the Delta on its way out to the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific.
The Delta is home to numerous species found nowhere else. It’s an important stopover on the Pacific Flyway and it’s also a fertile agricultural region.
“About 75% of the land and the Delta is used for agriculture. Every crop from tomatoes to grapes, to potatoes and corn, rice and everything in between,” said Ziegler.
Yet the Delta is an extremely fragile place.
“I would make the argument that this area is more threatened by climate change than any other place in the United States because it's dealing with sea level rise coming from the west, and more unpredictable freshwater conditions as a result of changing precipitation,” he said.
This poses a problem for all of California and the people who depend on our food.
Right now, water transported from the Delta happens via pumping into the California Aqueduct, which runs roughly parallel to Interstate 5. The current system was built in the mid-1900s to handle a population and climate that no longer exists today.
“It was designed to manage a different type of precipitation. We don't know exactly what will happen with climate change, but it's pretty clear that we're going to have more rain falling in the winter, as opposed to snow that will then melt in the spring. The reservoirs are really designed for that spring runoff,” said Carrie Buckman with the Department of Water Resources.
The state’s plan, under the direction of the Department of Water Resources, to address these issues and future-proof California’s water is to build a tunnel underneath the Delta.
“If we had been able to have the Delta Conveyance Project online in January, we would have captured another 228,000-acre feet of water. That's enough to feed about 2.3 million people or about 800,000 households,” said Buckman.
Restore The Delta has been an outspoken critic of the project from the start.
“It’s really sad. Restore The Delta was really earnest when it went and participated with the Design Construction Authority for two years. We didn't like the project, but we figured, okay, we're going to sit at a table for two years, we're going to explain our water quality concerns around harmful algal blooms, salinity, we're going to explain our concerns around air pollution during construction. Those were the big pieces for us and they weren't addressed,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla.
Graham Bradner works with the Delta Conveyance Design and Construction Authority (DCA).
The DCA is a pseudo-state office, funded and run by the 18 public water agencies that would directly benefit from the construction of a tunnel. The key players within the DCA are the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
“We did, from right from the beginning of our conceptual design process, engage local communities through a stakeholder engagement committee,” said Bradner. “Our mission with that committee was to look for ways to reduce effects, construction, designing construction effects to communities and environment within the Delta.
“They hired a contractor who did some analysis of the project as they see it, but we went through the scoping meetings where you couldn't give proper community impact, you could give your reports to a recorder. So sure, they held X amount of meetings, but if they don't listen, if they don't answer your questions and they never take your concerns seriously, is that really meaningful engagement? We don't think so,” said Barrigan-Parrilla.
When asked if the Delta communities that the DCA has engaged with have been supportive, Bradner admitted they have not been.
“None of the folks who participated in the Stakeholder Engagement Committee are really supportive of the project. That wasn't the objective. The objective was to give everyone in the community an opportunity to be part of the concept design phase,” said Bradner.
“There's a perception — I think — that if we build this, the intake will be turned on and water would flow through it all the time. And that's not the proposal. The proposal is that it would only operate at times as the Sacramento River is higher, or at times that there aren't fish present during the summer,” said Buckman.
The California State Auditor released a report in May 2023 that said the Department of Water Resources has “made only limited progress in accounting for the effects of climate change in its forecasts of the water supply and in its planning for the operation of the State Water Project.”
It goes on to say that until DWR makes more progress and uses better data, “DWR will be less prepared than it could be to effectively manage the State’s water resources in the face of more extreme climate conditions.”
“The state auditor's report says it all. It validated everything that was in our comments regarding the Delta tunnel project,” said Barrigan-Parrilla.
The timeline for a complete and functioning Delta tunnel — should it be built — is at the very earliest a decade away. Will it still be relevant by then?
“I would say the world is watching us here that if we fail to meet these challenges of balancing the needs for nature, the needs for people south of the Delta and the needs for people in the Delta, we will fail in a way that sends a despairing message to all Californians and those well beyond,” said Ziegler.
WATCH PART THREE: What is California doing to help increase groundwater storage?
