Newsom Administration Rushes to Start Tunnel to Divert Water from San Francisco Bay Delta

SACRAMENTO--The state agency responsible for large water project construction released the first key document marking the official kickoff of the Newsom administration’s drive to build a giant tunnel to divert water from the San Francisco Bay Delta.

The document released by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is called a Notice of Preparation. It’s the first step in the environmental review process under the California Environmental Quality Act that the project must clear before it can be considered for permitting by other state agencies.

The document indicates that the state will consider a tunnel that would divert 6,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water from the Sacramento River, mostly to large farming operations in the San Joaquin Valley, south of the Delta. As alternatives, tunnels of between 3,000 cfs and 7,500 cfs will also be considered.

The Delta is the convergence of two main river systems that then drain into the San Francisco Bay. It is the largest estuary for fish and wildlife on the North American west coast. It is home to nearly 750 species of plants and wildlife. It is also a key link in the breeding network of wild salmon that are fished off of the California and Oregon coasts.

Several cities are located in the Delta, including Stockton, which has seen increasing toxic algal blooms in nearby Delta waters as freshwater flows have decreased due to overdrawn river systems combined with climate crisis-related temperature increases.

Sierra Club California has opposed construction of a conveyance diverting water from the Delta system because of its harmful impacts on fish and wildlife and its unlikely ability to improve water availability and water security for Californians. The Club was among those organizations that helped defeat a peripheral canal proposal that was promoted by former Governor Jerry Brown during his first period in office in 1982.

In his second period in office beginning in 2010, former Governor Brown embraced replacing the peripheral canal idea--which his father, former Governor Pat Brown, championed in the 1960s--with a twin tunnels proposal. By the time Governor Brown left office in 2018, he had revised his proposal to be a single tunnel.

Statement of Kathryn Phillips, Director of Sierra Club California:

“Here we go again.

“Since last February, when Governor Newsom said during his state-of-the-state address that he would support a single tunnel, we knew this expensive and outdated idea wasn’t off the table.

“However, we anticipated that there might be an effort to employ a list of efficiency, conservation, and other measures to reduce dependence on a tunnel before moving forward on such a massive and environmentally harmful project. In other words, we thought the horse would come before the cart.

“So, now we’ll have to focus a lot of time and energy on battling the tunnel again. And we now know with certainty, that Governor Newsom’s policy on water is not a whole lot different from Governor Brown’s.”