Delta Threat

The Delta Tunnel

• The Tunnel benefits big agriculture corporations, not the people of California.
• The Tunnel will speed up damage to northern California rivers and the Delta.
• The Tunnel is not needed to capture flood waters.
• The Tunnel has been designed without proper planning for climate change.
• The Tunnel is a multibillion-dollar boondoggle.

The Draft Environmental Impact Report

The Department of Water Resources released its Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Delta Conveyance Project for public comment from July 27, 2022 to December 16, 2022. Friends of the River submitted extensive comments along with many other conservation groups, water districts, counties, agencies and concerned citizens.

FOR believes the DEIR does not meet the legal requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) due to the following:

• The DEIR is inherently flawed because the project purpose and beneficiaries are unclear.
• The DEIR inappropriately and illegally narrows the geographic scope of the project.
• The DEIR inappropriately and illegally narrows the scope of subject matter area in its analysis, including operational impacts.
• The Project is effectively part of larger projects to increase dams and diversions from rivers in the state to augment exports to the south state.
• Due to the above flaws, the DEIR does not provide adequate safeguards and mitigation measures for California's rivers.

Key Problems with the Tunnel Plan

A key issue regarding the Plan is its failure to determine how much water the Delta ecosystem needs and to commit to meet those needs first before moving forward with a new plan that could further drain the estuary of much needed fresh water. Without adequate mitigation, already declining populations of fish and wildlife will likely be decimated. Even organizations that have endorsed the idea of building tunnels or canals under the Delta have raised sharp criticism, noting, among other things, that the assumed operation cannot be reconciled with upstream uses.

The tunnel is directly tied to the construction of new or expanded surface storage dams (inefficient and expensive) and reservoirs in California. In particular, the tunnel may be a catalyst to the approval of the 18-foot raise of the Shasta Dam and the Sites Offstream Reservoir Project in the Sacramento Valley, and build the Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River. Friends of the River has criticized these projects as too expensive and relatively ineffective in producing new water supplies. Reasonable investments in water conservation, recycling and reclamation, and environmentally beneficial groundwater management will produce far more water at a fraction of the cost of new and expanded dams.

Whether legislators or California voters will be willing to take on yet another multi-billion boondoggle project remains to be seen. 

Recent History: Delta Twin Tunnels/California Water Fix

The heart of the proposal was a $25 billion dollar plan to build two 7,500 cfs (cubic feet of water per second) 35-mile long twin tunnels to siphon water away from the Sacramento River and San Joaquin Bay Delta to send to Southern California. Most, if not all of the previous environmental restoration was stripped out of the Water Fix plan. The $25 billion project would have devastating impacts on the region’s farming and fishing and put several endangered species at increased risk of extinction.

While the Plan ostensibly was intended to recover endangered species in the Delta, it was mostly focused on construction of giant tunnels that will primarily carry subsidized irrigation water under the Delta to corporate agricultural operations in the Western San Joaquin Valley and in Southern California. If approved, the plan would provide the basis for a 50-year permit to cover the pumping of the State Water Project (SWP), operated by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in coordination with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR’s) Central Valley Project (CVP). That version of the BDCP proposed construction of three new intakes on a stretch of the Sacramento River near Hood. Twin tunnels at least 40 feet wide and 150 feet deep would convey water to the existing pumping plants in the south Delta near Tracy.

In August 2014, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) commented that the plan could violate the Clean Water Act and harm endangered fish species. In addition, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said they would not issue permits for the plan because the state could not prove that the habitat restoration plans would be effective in helping the salmon, sturgeon, or delta smelt. As a result, the Brown administration separated the habitat restoration plan and the water supply improvement plan with the plan called the “California Water Fix.” Before 2015, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan had two coequal goals of habitat restoration and water supply improvement. In effect, the guarantee to restore the Delta's environment has been dropped.