If Delta ‘tunnels’ built, we’re the losers
A million people live in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. If Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to siphon water to Los Angeles is completed, all of us are going to suffer.
If the state proceeds with the California WaterFix and its centerpiece twin tunnels, the state will be forced to confiscate ever more of the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers. We are resolutely opposed to this plan and have been since it was first hatched. That position puts us in opposition to our big-sister newspaper, The Sacramento Bee. In an editorial published Sunday, The Sacramento Bee endorsed – albeit, tepidly – the WaterFix, saying a single tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would be a “welcome” part of the solution to climate change.
The San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, The Modesto Bee and Stockton Record all have said the tunnels are a bad idea. Not one major newspaper north of Bakersfield sees the wisdom in building a pair of 40-foot diameter tubes capable of sending the entire Sacramento River under the Delta.
The Sacramento Bee even disagrees with itself. In 1982, it editorialized against Brown’s original water grab – Proposition 9’s Peripheral Canal. The tunnels are basically the same thing, just wrapped in concrete and buried 150 feet.
There’s another big difference. In 2018, Brown won’t risk asking voters for permission. He wants southern California’s goliath Metropolitan Water District and south Valley farmers to pay for his WaterFix tunnels, even if they have to build them one at a time. Met votes today, one faction pushing for one tunnel and another pushing for two. We’ll settle for none, because this awful idea will hurt us and the Delta.
The Sacramento River provides 80 to 85 percent of the water flowing into the Delta. Divert significant portions south, and salty San Francisco Bay water will come rushing deep into the Delta. The only thing capable of holding back all that salty water would be far greater flows from the San Joaquin River.
But the San Joaquin is a trickle until it meets the Merced, then the Tuolumne then the Stanislaus. So, in Phase I of the WaterFix the state is demanding that twice as much water – sometimes three times more – flows down each of our rivers into the Delta. The state says it’s to save salmon. But their insistence that only greater flows will do that is laughably inaccurate.
Peer-reviewed studies have shown the key to more salmon is better habitat, more wetlands, less predation and providing additional water only after the salmon signal they’re ready to move. The Delta has been called a “killing field” for salmon, with scientists admitting simply having more water won’t fix it.
If the tunnels aren’t built, perhaps the state will focus on fixing that engineered system of rip-rapped sloughs and channels holding water back from sinking farmland called the Delta. Now, precious few marshes and wetlands protect Delta smelt and juvenile salmon from non-native striped bass.
Farmers in Merced County generate $3.4 billion in food products – from almonds to winegrapes. Throw in Stanislaus and San Joaquin, and farmers generate nearly $9 billion a year. Their crops are processed in dozens of canneries, wineries and hulling facilities, creating thousands of jobs.
The state knows all this. The state’s response: Too bad; your water is going elsewhere.
By diverting our water, the state will make the finest irrigated farmlands in California resemble fields now so common further south: drier, dustier and sinking as water is sucked from below. This is a matter of social justice and economic survival.
Legions of state bureaucrats are trying to justify this water grab, and now The Sacramento Bee considers it a good idea. The tunnels won’t save the Delta, but they will hurt us. Don’t build even one.
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This story was originally published April 9, 2018 at 2:44 PM with the headline "If Delta ‘tunnels’ built, we’re the losers."