The board of the largely agricultural Westlands Water District voted 7-1 against taking part in Gov. Jerry Brown’s twin-tunnel project “to remake the fragile estuary that serves as the hub of California’s water delivery network,” reports the Sacramento Bee. The decision, by the first water agency to vote on the project, is “a potentially fatal blow” to the $17-billion project.
Westlands would have been responsible for paying more than $3 billion of the cost. Based in Fresno, Westland is the largest agricultural water district in the United States and serves more than 1,000 square miles of farmland in Fresno and Kings counties in the Central Valley. The Bee quoted the Westlands general manager as saying, “I am not certain the project can go forward” without the district’s contribution. Members of the Westlands board said the cost of irrigation water from the project was becoming unaffordable because the federal government exempted some water districts from having to pay a share of the project’s cost.
The general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California said that without Westlands, “[Y]ou don’t have a project. This was designed as a comprehensive solution for California, both ag and urban … My board has been pretty clear … they’re not in the business of subsidizing agriculture.”
Known as California Waterfix, the project calls for constructing two tunnels underneath the Sacramento River Delta with the goal of protecting fish populations in the Delta and assuring a more reliable water supply to Southern California. Water projects send millions of acre-feet of water annually to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.