Known as WaterFix, California’s proposed $15-billion water project to divert the Sacramento River won’t bring much more water to farmers or cities, says the Los Angeles Times.
For years, parts of the river have flowed north instead of south, as they would naturally, because of intensive pumping to supply farms and cities. The backflow has wreaked ecological havoc on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, steering migrating Chinook salmon and steelhead off track. Two out of three smelt are killed as a result of the pumping, says the Times.
Inspired by earlier proposals that date back to the 1960s, WaterFix was originally championed by the San Joaquin irrigation districts and Southland water agencies in 2015. The plan calls for building two 35-mile tunnels that would capture water farther north along the river, rather than pulling water entirely from the southern part of the delta as the system does today. In theory, this would lessen backflow and ultimately get more water to more people. But after a “protracted environmental review by skeptical federal fishery agencies,” what was once billed as a cure-all is now expected to maintain the status quo at best.
“This idea that it’s all going to be resolved is fiction,” said state Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin, whose agency, along with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, is in charge of the proposal.
“If the tunnels are built, state modeling indicates future delta exports to the valley’s thirsty fields and Southern California’s faucets would average 4.9 million acre-feet a year — only a small improvement over recent averages,” says the Times.
And yet, according to Cowin, “Without the project … that number could fall by 1 million acre-feet — to roughly 1970s levels.”
Few are pleased with the project proposal as it stands. Farmers worry the tunnels will suck up all the water before it gets to their irrigation ditches, and environmentalists are equally concerned that it will divert more water from fisheries, even though state and federal officials have promised otherwise. With such strong opposition, it remains unclear whether the project will move forward.