The tunnel project, now marketed to Californians as WaterFix, lacks community trust and political will and is saddled with a $16 billion (and growing) price tag that appears much larger than water agencies are willing to pay. The only certainty is that there’s not enough water to satisfy any one interest’s needs. Rather than work together to find a compromise that opens possibilities for all, the water world has chosen to do what is always does: fight over increasingly scarce drops.
Into this roiling pond of competing interests, the Public Policy Institute of California has thrown a stone — a grand bargain of sorts that seeks to offer a little something to each and lay down some core principles to fashion water policies and projects going forward.
The proposal attempts to address three sources of conflict that impede our ability to provide a reliable water supply and maintain ecosystem health, as required by state law. They are: whether to build the tunnels, how to allocate water to the endangered fish species and how to pay to maintain 1,100 miles of delta levees.
California should, the PPIC says:
Build only one tunnel.
Building half the proposed capacity would cost less than two tunnels, addressing the cost concerns of the water agencies, who will pay the lion’s share of the project. However, notes the WaterFix spokeswoman, it is bad engineering not to provide a backup system and, besides, it is really too far into the process to submit new plans. It also will provide only half the water.
Yet that idea catches the interest of the environmental groups and the delta residents who have vehemently opposed the paired pipes because they don’t trust the water system operators not to take more water than sustainable. They fear the delta will become uninhabitable to the fish and unproductive for delta farmers if the tunnels so decrease fresh water flows that saltwater can intrude from the bay and spoil the farmland.
Yet the single tunnel may prove to be the only plan within financial reach.
Manage water for ecosystems, not endangered species.
Invest flows and funds to achieve the greatest ecological return rather than managing water for species already in the emergency room. Tying pumping levels to the number of endangered delta smelt may not save them and may harm other parts of the ecosystem. It may be prudent to let some species or some salmon runs go extinct to maintain the overall health of the delta. If the delta smelt is going to remain as the legal indicator of when and how long the pumps can run to divert water into the system that serves 25 million Californians and 3 million acres of farmland, then, as the PPIC suggests, maybe it is time to breed delta smelt in hatcheries rather than trying to keep them alive in the wild. The tiny fish are all but extinct today.
Help delta residents by investing in improvements such as strengthening levees and letting them tap tunnel water supplies where local water is salty.
Like aggrieved communities anywhere, the delta residents are struggling to hold onto what they have and are suspicious of offers of help. Mostly, they want the state agencies to stay away. But the delta districts lack sufficient funds to keep their levees in repair. If the levees fail, they lose farmland, as well as roads, homes and power lines. Putting money into the levees would recognize their importance to the delta folks and to the reliability of the state’s largest water system.
But does the proposal solve the problem of restoring the delta and supplying water to thirsty cities and farms? “Nobody benefits from the status quo,” said Ellen Hanak, one of the three authors of the PPIC proposal.
What the proposal offers is common ground to work toward reliable water deliveries, guaranteed water for the environment and a means for the delta residents to keep their livelihoods. It changes up the discussion about a water management conundrum so intractable it is called a “wicked problem.” After years of political gridlock, it is worth a serious look.