By Caty Wagner
The past few months have seen a series of votes by participating State Water Contractors (SWC) on whether or not to fund the next phase of the environmentally destructive Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), aka the Delta Tunnel. The ultimate vote on construction of the tunnel is scheduled for 2027, although Newsom leaves office that January and has said that he wants the Delta Tunnel to be a “done deal” before he goes. Over the past few years, Newsom has continually tried to expedite the approval process for the tunnel, despite pushback from Sierra Club California and our partners highlighting the harms of the project. However, he was unfortunately able to expedite the tunnel’s multi-billion dollar sister project, Sites Reservoir.
California governors have pushed for the various iterations of this project since the 1960s, and have cost state residents billions of dollars in the process. Newsom considers the Delta Tunnel a legacy project, and like Jerry Brown trying to finish what his father Pat started, Newsom hopes to be the one to take the credit for the Delta Tunnel. Pressure from donors like Wonderful Co. billionaires the Resnicks and other agriculture and developer associations likely contribute to his sense of urgency.