The board of California’s largest urban water supplier voted on Tuesday to spend $141.6 million for a large share of the preliminary planning work on the state’s proposed water tunnel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
With the decision, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will continue covering nearly half of the preconstruction costs for the proposed 45-mile tunnel beneath the Delta, which Gov. Gavin Newsom says the state needs to protect the water supply in the face of climate change and earthquake risks.
“This is about planning for the next 100 years,” said Adán Ortega, Jr., chair of the MWD board.
The MWD’s 38-member board decided to approve the funding after heated debate.
The Metropolitan Water District’s board is set to vote in December on whether to spend $141.6 million for planning of the proposed Delta tunnel project.
Supporters, including business advocates and local water officials, said the project will ensure the reliability of supplies to protect Southern California’s economy. Opponents, including environmental advocates and Delta residents, said the project is a costly boondoggle that would harm the environment and push threatened fish species to the brink while failing to deliver the promised water-supply benefits.
The MWD’s board has yet to decide whether to invest in building the tunnel, which the state has estimated will cost $20.1 billion. That decision is not expected until 2027.
Providing funds for the initial work, Ortega said, will enable the agency “to gather critical information about the project’s benefits and costs that will allow us to evaluate whether we will participate in the full construction of the project.”
Newsom praised the agency’s support and said the tunnel, called the Delta Conveyance Project, is “the most important climate adaptation project in the United States of America.”
“We’re doing everything in our power to move that project forward,” the governor said during an event at a rice farm in Northern California.
Newsom met with MWD leaders in Los Angeles last week to encourage them to support the project, and state Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot spoke at Tuesday’s meeting to make the administration’s case.
“Gov. Newsom has two years left in office, and we are focused like a laser on completing the permitting and the certification for this project to make it shovel-ready,” Crowfoot said. “Your continued partnership is essential for this project to move forward.”
The Metropolitan Water District, which delivers imported water to Southern California, is raising rates and property taxes to cover rising costs.
Crowfoot reiterated the Newsom administration’s position that building the tunnel is essential to modernize the state’s infrastructure for more severe droughts and deluges with climate change, and to withstand sea-level rise and the risks of an earthquake that could put existing infrastructure out of commission.
“We need in coming decades to keep this source of plentiful, cheap water moving across California,” Crowfoot told the board. “This is a cornerstone project of our water resilience.”
The board voted overwhelmingly to support providing the funds the state requested.
A single board member, Mark Gold, voted no. Gold, who represents Santa Monica, raised various concerns and questions during a committee meeting Monday. He pointed out that there are about 10 lawsuits in which environmental groups, local agencies and tribes are seeking to block the state’s plans.
Gold noted that state regulators also are in the midst of a contentious process updating California’s plan for managing water in the Delta.
In addition, Gold said it seemed premature to decide on funding for 2026 and 2027 now. Although 11 other water agencies in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area have agreed to the state’s funding request, two agricultural water suppliers, the Kern County Water Agency and the Dudley Ridge Water District, have not yet approved additional funds, which Gold called a “red flag.”
He also questioned why the state isn’t footing more of the bill. “If this is such a high priority for the state of California, why isn’t the state even offering to pay some of this? Most of it? All of it?” Gold said.
A new analysis shows that building a California water tunnel would cost $20 billion. State officials say the project’s benefits would far outweigh the costs.
Among other things, Gold raised questions about whether the MWD ultimately will be able to afford the project, especially when considered alongside other large investments. He noted that the district also is moving ahead with plans to build an $8-billion water recycling facility in Southern California, a project that could be completed within a decade.
Gold said he’s concerned about potential “offramps” that would enable the district to pull out of participating in the project. Explaining his vote, he said he probably would have supported the funding if those “offramps” had been strengthened.
MWD officials said the district will have several potential “offramps” enabling them to end their financial support for various reasons, such as if the state failed to secure changes to water rights or other necessary rulings.
Gold said he is concerned about protecting the district’s finances and also “the ecology of a frankly degrading and potentially collapsing Delta.”
“There’s a lot at stake at doing this right,” he said.
Fish populations in the Delta and San Francisco Bay have suffered declines in recent years, with species such as winter-run Chinook salmon and longfin smelt listed as endangered by the federal government. The pumping of water to supply farms and cities has contributed to the degradation of the ecosystem.
The tunnel would transport water beneath the Delta, creating a second route to draw water from the Sacramento River into the aqueducts of the State Water Project, which delivers water to 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland.
The Newsom administration is projecting that California’s State Water Project could lose up to 23% of its water delivering capacity within 20 years.
State water managers say the project would enable the state to capture and transport more water during wet periods, and would lessen limitations on water deliveries linked to fish protections at the state’s pumping facilities.
Newsom has said he hopes to have the project fully permitted to move forward by the time he leaves office in early 2027. The state’s plans call for starting construction in late 2029.
Crowfoot said the goal is to have the tunnel built in 2042.
The Metropolitan Water District, which provides drinking water for about 19 million people in Southern California, has spent $160.8 million supporting the project since 2020.
A coalition of environmental groups urged the MWD board not to provide more funding.
The group Restore the Delta condemned the decision, calling it a “move that furthers an unjust water grab,” and argued that the tunnel is aimed at expanding agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley at the expense of the environment, communities in the Delta and ratepayers in Southern California.
Opponents of the tunnel have said the state should instead invest in other approaches in the Delta, such as strengthening aging levees and restoring natural floodplains to reduce the risk of flooding, while changing water management and improving existing infrastructure to protect the estuary’s health.
The Delta Conveyance Project is a key component of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s strategy for a hotter, drier California. Opponents say it will be an ecological disaster.
Critics also have called for Southern California to reduce its reliance on water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River by investing in local efforts to boost supplies, such as recycling wastewater.
The vote comes at a time of internal turmoil at the MWD. In June, the board placed General Manager Adel Hagekhalil on leave and began an investigation into harassment allegations against him by the district’s chief financial officer. Hagekhalil has denied doing anything wrong.
The board in October voted to extend Hagekhalil’s leave of absence while the investigation continues, and Deven Upadhyay has been serving as interim general manager.
Some environmentalists who oppose the tunnel said it’s a shame Hagekhalil has been sidelined because they believe he would have brought more of a critical perspective to the discussion.
Different versions of the plan have been debated in California for decades — at first calling for a canal around the Delta, and later twin tunnels beneath the Delta, followed by Newsom’s current proposal for a single tunnel.
With the top manager of the Metropolitan Water District under investigation, some of his supporters are concerned his sidelining might slow a push for change.
In 2016, the MWD purchased several islands in the delta at a cost of $175 million in connection with an earlier iteration of the project. A change in the tunnel’s route later moved it away from the islands.
“It’s had different approaches, but essentially, it is the same project that cost an endless amount of money,” said Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “They just keep dumping money for something that’s never going to get built.”
During the board meeting, those on both sides of the debate said water affordability is an issue that will need to be carefully considered in the coming years.
Earlier this year, the MWD board decided to increase rates and property taxes throughout the region over the next two years, partly to make up for declines in revenue due to conservation efforts and reductions in water usage.
Some opponents of the project underlined cost concerns. Krystal Moreno of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians described affordability as a growing crisis and asked: “Is there truly a need for more water? Is there an actual reliability problem?”
Moreno said the construction work also would disturb and desecrate her tribe’s sacred sites, including the burial sites of ancestors.
Others argued that taking more water would decimate the Delta ecosystem and harm communities.
“This is the worst idea,” said John Minnehan, a Lodi resident who grew up fishing and picnicking with his family along the Delta’s waterways. “It’s one of the most beautiful areas of California. It’s a jewel, actually. And what you’re thinking of doing is digging it up and turning it into a mud bowl.”
Researchers say California’s cities have big potential to use water more efficiently while taking advantage of stormwater and recycled wastewater.
He said the MWD’s effort to “grab as much water as it can and make itself rich from this precious resource” will unleash an environmental disaster.
“It’ll ruin the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the life of those living in and around the Delta, not to mention all the species that live in those waters,” Minnehan said.
Supporters said they believe building the tunnel would make the water supply more reliable and address risks in the existing infrastructure.
“There’s no better or more cost effective option for safeguarding Southern California water security,” said Richard Lambros, managing director of the Southern California Leadership Council, calling the project “the sustainable, climate-resilient insurance that our region needs.”
Kristopher Anderson, a policy advocate for the California Chamber of Commerce, said that water supply reliability is “foundational to California’s ability to maintain and grow its economy,” and that the project is integral to securing that reliability.
Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, praised the MWD’s decision to participate in the next phase of planning and preconstruction work. She said the project would “build climate and earthquake resiliency into the foundation of California’s water infrastructure, better preparing us for increased periods of drought and climate extremes.”
