Newsom pledges to move forward with Delta water tunnel in California

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SACRAMENTO — Gov.Gavin Newsom said his administration is “moving forward aggressively” to continue laying the groundwork for a giant tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to replumb the state’s water system.“We got to move faster.

Move faster,” Newsom said to regulators during a speech Thursday at a conference held by the Assn.of California Water Agencies.

“We all have to be held to a higher level of accountability.”California’s 40th governor provided a chronological look back at his water policies since taking office in 2019 and asserted the need to continue his effort to modernize state infrastructure to provide for cities and farms into the future.Newsom cast the tunnel as a “climate adaptation project,” noting that climate change is projected to shrink the amount of water the state can deliver with its current infrastructure.

With his term expiring at the end of the year, Newsom acknowledged that he will soon “pass the baton” on water policy to the next governor.Democrat or Republican, that person could decide the fate of his signature water project.

“The Delta Conveyance, if we had it last year alone, would have provided enough water, in terms of what we could have captured with an updated system, enough water for 9.8 million Californians’ needs for over a year,” Newsom said.“We’ve got to get that done.” Water has been a focus of the Newsom administration since his first day in office, when the governor took his cabinet to Monterey Park Tract, a rural Central Valley community that lacked access to safe drinking water.

Described by Newsom as “the forever problem” in California, water policy is also among the most politically contentious issues in the state.The tunnel would create a second route to transport water from new intakes on the Sacramento River to the south side of the Delta, where pumps send water into...