California says new Delta tunnels plan better for environment, fish

California officials, unveiling the fine print on a significant redesign of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Delta tunnels project, said Thursday that the plan would reduce impacts on the environment and improve habitat for endangered fish and other species.

The Department of Water Resources released hundreds of pages of environmental impact review documents spelling out details of changes first disclosed by the governor in recent months.

It represents the latest version of a project with a stated dual mission: to help stabilize the environmentally fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta; and provide a reliable supply of fresh water to Southern California cities and farms.

The controversial project calls for construction of two 30-mile-long tunnels that would draw water from the Sacramento River and deliver it to the pumps and government-operated canals near Tracy. From there the water would flow to an estimated 25 million Californians and 3 million acres of farmland.

Brown has said the project, estimated to cost $15 billion, would re-engineer the Delta by moving billions of gallons of Northern California water via the tunnels instead of through the estuary itself. Officials say decades of pumping water south through the complex tidal ecosystem has caused considerable harm to wildlife and habitat.

By replumbing the man-made water delivery system, the argument goes, the farmers and Southern Californians who rely on the Delta would get more reliable water deliveries. Under the current system, water allotments to Southern California vary dramatically at certain times of the year to protect fish, and the problem has worsened as the four-year drought has constricted supplies enormously.

Critics, however, have said the project is simply a Southern California “water grab” and doesn’t go nearly far enough to restore the damaged Delta.

The release of the new environmental impact review, as required by the state’s environmental laws, is a milestone in the project, which has been in the works since 2006.

Among the changes outlined Thursday are more details to a revision disclosed last December: State officials are eliminating three pumping plants planned for the tunnels’ intake facilities on the east bank of the Sacramento River between Clarksburg and Courtland. Instead, the water would be directed into the tunnels “by two new pumping plants constructed 40 miles away, on DWR property at the southern end of the tunnels near Clifton Court Forebay,” the report said.

The revision would eliminate the need for large buildings and “help preserve the views” from Highway 160 between Hood and Walnut Grove, a state-designated scenic highway through the Delta. DWR added that it has “sought to minimize potential disruption and dislocation of Delta residents.”

Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for the California Natural Resources Agency, the parent of DWR, said the latest revisions reflect an ongoing effort to shrink the environmental footprint of the project, including its construction, by minimizing energy use, emissions, noise and air pollution.

The latest revisions also call for creation of 600-foot by 500-foot sedimentation basins along the Sacramento River at each of the water intakes using earthen bays instead of concrete.

“So that eliminates the need to drive hundreds of concrete piles into the ground to support the concrete basins, so that’s a lot less noise, a lot less concrete, etc.,” Vogel said.

Overall, DWR argues that the revised tunnels plan would “improve the conditions for threatened and endangered fish species within the Delta.”

As previously announced, the Brown administration now is proposing to restore some 30,000 acres of habitat in the Delta, about one third of the original proposal. Brown has called the new plan more realistic, but the revision angers environmentalists who say the governor is giving short shrift to the environment.

“There’s really no benefit to the project to the environment. It’s really an infrastructure project to reroute the Sacramento River,” said Osha Meserve, a lawyer representing environmentalists in the Delta.

The revised plan also drops earlier efforts to obtain a 50-year permit for the project, after some federal environmental agencies indicated they wouldn’t support such a plan. The new proposal calls for a permit “of far less than 50 years,” without specifying a time period.

Brown has called that a “technical” change, but it could cause anxiety for the water agencies that are supposed to pay for the $15 billion project. Under the proposal, the south-of-Delta agricultural districts and cities that would benefit from more reliable deliveries of water would be responsible for footing that tab. The exact mechanics of that funding is still under discussion.

The environmental report said fixing the Delta is designed to improve water deliveries to customers of the State Water Project and the federal government’s Central Valley Project. But it said nothing is guaranteed; the project doesn’t promise that customers will get certain minimum amounts of water.

Vogel said abandoning a 50-year permit would bring greater flexibility to manage the project in case environmental conditions deteriorate further. But environmentalists suspect the tunnels would end up getting used to their fullest, no matter what the environmental conditions are.

“If they build the infrastructure and take out the loans and the bonds to do all that…it can’t just be sitting there empty,” Meserve said.

The project needs to be vetted by various state and federal agencies before it can be implemented. While legislative approval isn’t required, criticism from the public or influential water agencies could reduce political support for the plan.

This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 12:27 PM with the headline "California says new Delta tunnels plan better for environment, fish."