“The Legislature is being asked to railroad over the objections of 4 million people and the 25 county supervisors that represent them and are trying to protect their homes and communities,” said Karen Lange on behalf of the Delta Counties Coalition at an informational hearing of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife. “In the case of the tunnel, every county and city that is affected by it opposes it.”
Stockton community organizations, salmon fishers and environmental groups said Newsom’s plan would remove guardrails and hamper litigation against the Delta tunnel and other projects.
One Newsom proposal, for instance, would exclude certain internal communications (PDF) such as emails from the administrative record prepared for litigation if they didn’t ultimately reach the final decision-making body.
Assembly analysts warned that this “allows the agency to pick and choose what documents to include in the record” (PDF). Though these records could be available under a separate California Public Records Act request, this too can lead to lawsuits and delays and “could prove very costly to public agencies.”
In today’s letter, legislators criticized parts of the package that would set a time limit for lawsuits challenging the tunnel and other projects and reduce protections against killing certain wildlife species, such as sandhill cranes that winter in the Delta.
Crowfoot told CalMatters that the proposals were not developed specifically to push through the tunnel project.
“I haven’t been part of any internal conversation on fully protected species and our need to modernize it that discuss the Sandhill crane or its relationship to the project,” he said. “The intent is not to short circuit any environmental review or public input, but it is to ultimately get to an answer around whether this project can be supported and move forward.”
Decades in the making yet still decades from completion, the proposed tunnel has been called both a water grab and a critical update to water supplies for 27 million people, mostly in Southern California, and 750,000 acres of farmland. State officials say it would protect a vital water artery from earthquakes, sea level rise and extreme swings from wet to dry, while local communities and environmental groups say it would upend the way of life and sensitive ecosystems of the Delta.
The estimated price tag, last updated in 2020, is around $16 billion, which would eventually be paid back by water agencies receiving its supplies. Last year, a draft state environmental report warned that the tunnel project would harm endangered and threatened species, convert 2,300 acres of farmland, and disrupt cultural and historic sites.