<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107254" dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060057083" class="" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107958">https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060057083</a><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107965"><br></div><div><br></div><header style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 960px; width: 960px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107673"><h2 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 17.999998092651367px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase; position: relative; color: rgb(0, 51, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107674">WESTERN WATER</h2><h1 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 30px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107675">Jerry Brown's tunnels would cement his family legacy</h1><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107676"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107677"><a href="https://www.eenews.net/staff/Jeremy_P_Jacobs" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); text-decoration: none;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107678">Jeremy P. Jacobs</a>, E&E News reporter</span> <time datetime="2017-07-10 12:51:14 -0400" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107679">Greenwire: Monday, July 10, 2017</time></section><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 20px 20px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 940px; width: 940px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107680"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19450.jpg" alt="California Governor Jerry Brown Jr., at microphone. Photo credit: Associated Press" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 940px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107681" data-id="7b2d9b64-b8cb-1352-eb8c-1429f402c7e9"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 5px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107682">California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and his father, Pat (left), at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, when Brown first ran for president. Forty years later, Brown is seeking to complete a family's legacy on water infrastructure that his father began when he was California’s governor in the 1960s. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107683">Associated Press</span></div></aside></header><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 640px; width: 640px; clear: both;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107684"><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 14.000000953674316px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; counter-reset: list-header-num 0; max-width: 600px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107685"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107686">Sixty years ago, California Gov. Edmund Gerald "Pat" Brown built the biggest waterworks the world had ever seen.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107687">The State Water Project transformed California, moving billions of gallons of water from the wet north to the dry south using dozens of dams, pumping stations and a 400-mile-long man-made river. It serves 25 million people and irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of cropland.</div><aside data="2" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(239, 239, 239); margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 180px; width: 180px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.74902) 2px 3px 10px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.74902) 2px 3px 10px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107688"><h1 style="background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039) 35%, transparent 85%); background-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border: 0px; font-size: 15.076922416687012px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: center;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107689">SPECIAL REPORT</h1><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12.923077583312988px; margin: 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107690"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/gw/graphics/damage_logo.png" hspace="0" vspace="4" border="0" alt="Damage Logo" align="center" style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 158.26087951660156px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107691" data-id="774c0843-ecb3-7ea0-1cfe-5e01dd7077c6"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107692">American dams — symbols of the nation's 20th century might — are crumbling. E&E News examines efforts to avert disaster as pressure grows for a new era of dam building in the arid West. <a href="http://www.eenews.net/special_reports/Damage" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107693">Click here</a> to view the series.</div></section></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107694">But spectacular as it was, the project was flawed. It failed to deliver as much water as promised, mainly because a key piece was missing: a way to move water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a 738,000-acre ecosystem where California's two main rivers meet before they flow to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107695">Now Gov. Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown Jr. is seeking to complete his family's water legacy.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107696">His "California WaterFix" would build two tunnels 40 feet in diameter, buried 15 stories underground to take water from the Sacramento River and move it 35 miles around the eastern edge of the delta. The price tag for the largest U.S. water project in decades: more than $17 billion.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107697">It's Brown's second try at finishing what his dad started. In a hard-fought ballot battle in 1982, voters rejected his plan to build an above-ground "peripheral canal" around the delta.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107698">The tunnels appeared headed for a similar fate until the Trump administration decided last month that the project wouldn't jeopardize critical habitat of imperiled fish, including the delta smelt and salmon (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060056661" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107699"><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107700">Greenwire</em></a>, June 27). This fall, the boards of water districts will vote on whether to pay for the project, which would pass the cost on to their customers.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107701">Brown's tunnels have become California's most divisive environmental issue, pitting agribusiness against environmentalists, and Northern California against the south.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107702">Proponents say tunnels are needed to secure 30 percent of Southern California's water supply, including up to 90 percent of the water used in the state's agricultural hub.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107703">They argue the tunnels will safeguard an aged 1,100-mile levee system that protects the delta, including more than 50 tracts and islands and 700 miles of winding channels, many of which sit below sea level, earning it the nickname California's Holland.</div><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; max-width: 300px; width: 300px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107704"><h1 title="click to enlarge" style="background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039) 35%, transparent 85%); background-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border: 0px; font-size: 15.076922416687012px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: center;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107705">The California WaterFix</h1><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19445.png" alt="Califonia WaterFix tunnels map. Map credit: Claudine Hellmuth/E&E News" title="click to enlarge" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 300px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107706" data-id="5a5dce13-9de5-8f25-1d48-0aaa288d0b7b"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107707"><a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060057083#" title="click to enlarge" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107708">[+] </a>Brown’s proposal would construct three new intakes on the Sacramento River near Clarksburg. Two tunnels would shuttle water 35 miles to pumps that ship it south. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107709">Claudine Hellmuth/E&E News</span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107710">They say the tunnels will help fish by easing reliance on giant export pumps in the south delta that draw water so powerfully, they reverse the natural flow of water.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107711">And they claim they are necessary in the face of climate change and uncertain sea-level rise.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107712">"The delta is likely to change and be inundated by sea-level rise," said Jerry Meral of the Natural Heritage Institute, a controversial former adviser to Brown on water issues. "If that happens, we'd lose 20 percent of the state's water supply."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107713">Project foes counter that the tunnels would destroy up to 15,000 acres of the largest western estuary in the Americas, home to 700 native species and fisheries. The environmental benefits that Brown touts are misleading, they say, because the tunnels would deplete freshwater flows through the delta, allowing salinity levels from intruding ocean water to rise — and further endangering fish.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107714">"To date, it has been the consensus of all the scientists — except those paid for by the tunnels' proponents — that those tunnels would actually worsen conditions for fish such as smelt, and the iconic salmon," said Jonas Minton, a former deputy director of the state's Department of Water Resources who now works for the nonprofit Planning and Conservation League.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107715">The tunnels also don't solve the main problems facing the delta or the state's water woes, opponents say, because they won't create more water and the levee system will have to be updated anyway because it protects major highways, railways and farms.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107716">Critics say Brown is more motivated by his family's water legacy and political ambition than reality.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107717">"There are two things that Jerry Brown didn't get in his political career. One was the presidency. The other was the peripheral canal," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla of the nonprofit Restore the Delta, pointing to Brown's unsuccessful runs for president in 1976, 1980 and 1992.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107718">But the project's beneficiaries call Brown's effort heroic.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107719">"If you like history, you can't help but notice that his father was the architect and drove the project in the first place," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. "And now the second run at it — a smarter and cleaner solution — and it is still divisive, and he's still trying to pull together two parts of the state."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107720">The controversy underscores Brown's complicated record on environmental issues over more than 40 years in politics and raises questions about his legacy.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107721">Brown has been the darling of the environmental left since his first term in the 1970s. There is no doubt the governor deeply cares about the planet and humans' impact upon it, often expressing his concerns in theological terms. He has been lauded for his leadership on climate change, recently traveling to China and emphatically criticizing President Trump's decision to abandon the Paris Agreement (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060056541" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107722"><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107723">Climatewire</em></a>, June 26).</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107724">While he insists the tunnels are not about his family's legacy, Brown's approach to infrastructure has aligned with his father's and that of politicians of an earlier era. Now 79, he represents the last of a generation that believes in major public works. Perhaps because of that, when pressed on water and the delta, he has repeatedly turned to a solution that would have made his father proud: Let's build our way out.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107725">"We have highly engineered California. We know that. Get in a plane, fly over, you see causeways and storage facilities and the great California Aqueduct, all sorts of things, and all over," Brown said at a January 2016 water conference. "We can protect the natural systems, and we can do so, but we have to engineer our way forward because that's the way it is."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107726">Observers on all sides agree the delta is at a breaking point. The status quo isn't working. Fish populations continue to decline, and water interests persist in lobbying for more exports. It's the type of big problem that Brown has sought to tackle his entire career.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107727">"How can you protect the delta? How can you restore the delta without taking water away from someone?" said Bill Kier, a veteran California fisheries biologist who has followed delta issues for decades.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107728">"The question now is, will the clock run out on Jerry Brown?"</div><h3 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107729">'A monument to <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107730">me</em>'</h3><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 620px; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107731"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19446.jpg" alt="Governor of California Edmund G. Brown and JFK. Photo credit: JKF Library/Wikipedia" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107732" data-id="7260121a-b2c6-9634-52ea-a5c07332dfef"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107733">Pat Brown with President John F. Kennedy. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107734">JKF Library/Wikipedia</span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107735">Massive storms hit Northern California in 1955, causing flooding on the Feather River, tributary of the state's largest river, the Sacramento.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107736">Dozens died as Yuba City and Marysville were washed away.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107737">A teenage Brown was there.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107738">At a recent news conference, Brown recalled how he hopped in a plane to see the damage with his father, who was then the state's attorney general.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107739">Pat Brown became obsessed with the California water system immediately after being elected in 1958. A headstrong Irish Catholic politician, he set out to build a water plan drafted a year earlier with a vigor reminiscent of Texas Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who at the time was Senate majority leader.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107740">Brown's scheme would become the State Water Project. Its linchpin would be Oroville Dam on the Feather River.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107741">The Democrat was driven by the floods, concern about water supply for a population that was booming post-World War II, and his own vanity.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107742">"I loved building things," he would later say, according to Marc Reisner's history of water in the West, "Cadillac Desert." "I wanted to build that goddamned water project. I was <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107743">absolutely determined</em> I was going to pass this California Water Project. I wanted this to be a monument to <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107744">me</em>."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107745">The scope of Brown's proposal was unparalleled for the time. It was also very expensive.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107746">To finance it, Brown placed a $1.75 billion water bond on the ballot in 1960. (That's $14.3 billion in 2017 dollars.) The project would cost far more than that, and Brown knew it. But in order to sell it to voters, Brown insisted on keeping the number below $2 billion.</div><aside style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 4px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-color: rgb(152, 177, 203); margin: 0.2em 0px 20px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; max-width: 300px; width: 300px; position: relative;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107747"><section style="background-color: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-box-shadow: none; box-shadow: none;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107748"><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 21.53845977783203px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 20px 40px 20px 20px; vertical-align: baseline; counter-reset: list-header-num 0; max-width: 600px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.431; box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107749"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; z-index: 1; text-indent: 2.25em;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107750">Californians had been sold a pig in a poke: a project whose cost was deliberately and extravagantly understated, and whose delivery capability was much less than they had been led to believe.</div></section></section><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12.923077583312988px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.66667em 20px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); display: block; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.16667em;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107751">Marc Reisner in “Cadillac Desert"</span></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107752">One analysis from Brown's administration, for example, pegged the cost at $1.8 billion. It did mention Oroville Dam, but neglected to include the cost of actually constructing the tallest dam in the nation.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107753">In November 1960, the bond passed by the narrowest of margins: 174,000 votes, about 3 percent.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107754">Brown forged ahead, but not without missteps.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107755">His administration would sign contracts guaranteeing the delivery of about 4.23 million acre-feet of water before construction began. (An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or as much as a California household uses in a year. California currently uses about 42 million acre-feet annually.)</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107756">But the project could not provide that much water without two features: taking water from rivers like the Trinity, Eel and Klamath in the northern reaches of the state and constructing a way to move water around the delta.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107757">Brown's scheme, along with the federal Central Valley Project, would forever change the delta's ecosystem, making it a highly engineered landscape. It called vaguely for a "trans-delta system," but no one knew what that meant.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107758">According to biologist Kier, backers of the tunnels still point to that language to justify it.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107759">"That's what the proponents regard as the foundational voters' approval," he said, "the voter approval that overrides any questions about whether they are doing the right thing."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107760">The delta conveyance wasn't built, and northern rivers remained largely untapped. As a result, the State Water Project initially delivered only about 2.5 million acre-feet.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107761">Some would call that a structural deficit. Others would call it crazy.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107762">"Californians had been sold a pig in a poke: a project whose cost was deliberately and extravagantly understated, and whose delivery capability was much less than they had been led to believe," Reisner wrote in "Cadillac Desert."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107763">Nevertheless, Brown would get his wish and reshape California's water system, laying the groundwork for what would become the world's sixth-largest economy. Dozens of dams and facilities were built. Power and pumping plants shuttled water over mountain ranges, to thirsty cities and the nation's most prodigious agricultural area (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/special_reports/Damage/stories/1060052113" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107764"><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107765">Greenwire</em></a>, March 27).</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107766">And the state constructed its longest river: the 444-mile Governor Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct.</div><h3 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107767">Bitter ballot battle</h3><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 620px; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107768"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19447.jpg" alt="Jerry Brown signing the Peripheral Canal bill. Photo credit: Associated Press" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107769" data-id="0e6407df-1abe-4f7d-694e-e61f3b144fc9"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107770">Gov. Jerry Brown signing “peripheral canal” legislation in 1980. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107771">Associated Press</span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107772">After the elder Brown left office in 1967, water interests wanted to complete the project. They eyed building a large dam and reservoir on the Eel River, a nearly 200-mile-long waterway in Northern California.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107773">Brown's successor, Gov. Ronald Reagan (R), however, had little interest in major public works, reportedly falling asleep in a key meeting about it. Then, a somewhat halfhearted attempt at a delta conveyance facility was scuttled by a lawsuit in 1974.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107774">That left the problem to Brown's son, Jerry, who took office after Reagan in 1975.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107775">The contradictions between Jerry Brown's position on water infrastructure and his views toward other issues became clear immediately.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107776">Brown in many ways was the stylistic opposite of his father, a product of the new environmental movement and deep skepticism of big government projects in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. He campaigned as a fiscal conservative, promoting an "era of limits," "small is beautiful" and "less is more." Once intent on becoming a Catholic priest, he eschewed the state's governor's mansion, living instead in an ordinary apartment. There was no limo for Brown; he rode in an inexpensive 1974 Plymouth Satellite.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107777">Nevertheless, Brown set out to fix the more than 1-million-acre-foot shortfall in his father's water project with an $11.6 billion canal.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107778">The Democrat tried to appease the state's water interests and his environmental base simultaneously. He hired Meral, the former Environmental Defense Fund leader whom Brown had met when Meral was running an anti-dam campaign. Meral, a co-founder of Friends of the River, was an accomplished whitewater kayaker. Runs on the Tuolumne River were named for him.</div><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 180px; width: 180px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107779"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19449.jpg" alt="Jerry Meral. Photo credit: Natural Heritage Institute" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 180px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107780" data-id="8f2ee23f-9a58-6af6-6b0d-51a3bf97f1ed"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107781">Jerry Meral, now of the Natural Heritage Institute, has been a longtime adviser to Brown on water issues. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107782">Natural Heritage Institute</span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107783">Brown took new reservoirs off the table — no new dams. He and Meral came up with a plan to take "surplus" flows from the Sacramento River during the winter and spring and send them around the east side of the delta in a 43-mile-long "peripheral canal," where the water could then be pumped to existing storage facilities.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107784">The plan was put on the ballot in a June 1982 special election, and it became one of the most bitterly fought and divisive political campaigns in the state's history.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107785">Some environmentalists initially backed the plan, out of loyalty to Brown and Meral. Quickly, though, it created unusual alliances.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107786">Greens ultimately opposed the project because it would deprive the delta of freshwater inflows critical to its ecosystem. To them, it went too far to develop water supplies.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107787">Two major agricultural players — the J.G. Boswell Co. and Salyer Land Co. — joined them because of Brown's refusal to build on the northern rivers. To them, it didn't go far enough.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107788">Southern California voters supported the canal as vital to their economic future. Voters in the north equated it to the south stealing their water — again.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107789">"It became Voldemort — that which would not be named," said Jeffrey Mount of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, referring to the main villain in the "Harry Potter" novels. "Friendships were ruined. Divorces occurred."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107790">The campaign supporting the canal totaled $2.5 million. The effort to defeat it spent $3.3 million.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107791">Weather, it seemed, was also working against Brown. The state had some of the driest years on record in 1976 and 1977. But 1980 unleashed torrential storms on the state, culminating in 1982 when an El Niño weather pattern caused storms resulting in $1 billion in property damage.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107792">"It would be excessive to say that a string of five rain-laden years determined the outcome of the vote on the Peripheral Canal, but it would probably be true," Reisner wrote in "Cadillac Desert."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107793">On election day, Southern California — home to most of the state's voters — backed Brown's canals by a 2-to-1 margin. But Northern California voted against it 9-to-1. Brown lost resoundingly by a vote of 62.7 percent to 37.3 percent.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107794">Governors after Brown — George Deukmejian (R), Pete Wilson (R), Gray Davis (D) — did all they could to avoid the issue. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) revived the concept in 2007, but he lacked the political capital to move it forward.</div><h3 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107795">Brown returns, floats revised plan</h3><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 620px; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107796"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19448.jpg" alt="Jerry Brown campaign 2010. Photo credit: Steve Rhodes/Flickr" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107797" data-id="9ab77623-1901-4f5a-6a5b-58b09597c5be"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107798">Brown at a 2010 campaign rally in Oakland. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107799">Steve Rhodes/Flickr</span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107800">When Jerry Brown was elected governor again in 2010, he again set out to tackle the delta problem.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107801">He trimmed Schwarzenegger's plan, making his California WaterFix tunnels smaller and more scientifically advanced than the peripheral canal of 1982.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107802">Though the map is similar, the tunnels would run 35 miles, as opposed to the canal's 43. The tunnels would have a maximum capacity of 9,000 cubic feet of water per second taken from three intakes, far lower than the 21,800 cfs of the canal.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107803">And the tunnels would allow water to be sent from the tunnels to the delta, allowing more flexibility in maintaining water quality and combating saltwater intruding from the ocean via the San Francisco Bay.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107804">The big differences are the WaterFix's "smaller size and much-diminished expectations for greater water exports," said Jay Lund, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis. The tunnels are "more to improve reliability of historical pumping, or reduce its degradation, with little capacity to increase export pumping."</div><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; max-width: 260px; width: 260px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107805"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19451.png" alt="Califonia WaterFix infographic. Image credit: @CAWaterFix/Twitter" title="click to enlarge" style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 260px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107806" data-id="47792b06-3eec-ab71-3de0-f9700bfade67"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107807"><a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060057083#" title="click to enlarge" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107808">[+] </a>Brown's administration has emphasized the need to update the state’s water infrastructure in pushing for the WaterFix. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107809">@CAWaterFix/Twitter</span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107810">But, he added, it is "still a very sizable project with lots of implications."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107811">Mount, of PPIC, has argued for a decade that the state must do something to address water issues in the delta.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107812">The delta's islands are sinking, levees that protect them face earthquake risk, there are changing runoff patterns from more intense storms and droughts as the climate changes, and it will undoubtedly be affected by sea-level rise.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107813">"Either the state builds an isolated facility that takes more reliable, high-quality water from the Sacramento River and bypasses the delta, or, otherwise, the alternative is to begin planning for declining water supply from the delta," Mount said.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107814">The latter could have major consequences for 19 million people in Southern California who get about 30 percent of their water from the delta and State Water Project.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107815">It would also affect Central Valley agriculture, which gets up to 90 percent of its drinking and irrigation water from the delta.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107816">And the tunnels are more important to agribusiness now than the canal was in 1982. The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will in the coming years likely limit groundwater pumping, agriculture's primary way of coping with delivery shortages from the delta.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107817">"If you are a region that is depending on the delta and the water supply is declining — and, at the same time, you have to cut 2 million acre-feet of groundwater pumping to bring your aquifer into balance — it's going to be pretty damn painful," Mount said.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107818">"That water is absolutely vital for the San Joaquin Valley to bring their groundwater into balance."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107819">Therein lies one of primary complaints about the project. Critics contend the project would benefit only a few select interests — mainly the Metropolitan Water District, which provides water to most of Southern California, and agriculture.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107820">"We're not being simplistic when we say the project won't make more water. It won't," said Barrigan-Parrilla of Restore the Delta. "It's just a switch to take it away from someone else or the environment."</div><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; max-width: 260px; width: 260px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107821"><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(239, 239, 239); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.74902) 2px 3px 10px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.74902) 2px 3px 10px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107822"><h1 style="background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039) 35%, transparent 85%); background-color: rgb(0, 51, 102); border: 0px; font-size: 15.076922416687012px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 3px 7px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: center;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107823">'One million hours': Jerry Brown on his water project</h1><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12.923077583312988px; margin: 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; counter-reset: list-header-num 0; max-width: 600px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107824"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107825">"If you all recall where you were in 1960, in November. Some of you weren't here, right? Well, the water bond, I believe, passed by less than 1 percentage point. ... So, it's not easy." — <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107826">California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) discussing the ballot measure that authorized his father's State Water Project at a press conference last February following the near-catastrophe at Oroville Dam.</em></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107827">"These are big projects, and anything big today challenges the Lilliputian mind that is still operative in too many political circles. Big is often feared. And sometimes big can cause big problems. ... But I don't think you can have a great country or a great state unless you invest tens of billions, even hundreds of billions in the core, material, substratum of our whole economy." <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107828">— Brown at the Oroville Dam press conference.</em></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107829">"We're all part of nature, but we're manipulating, we're managing nature, but we have to do it within the rules as they are immutable. So that's our project here, and we say to those who say, 'Don't build, don't do anything.' No, we have built, it's outdated, and now we got to fix things and make it all work. To those who say, 'Forget the fish': No, the fish are part of God's creation as are we, and we all have to make it work and we can make it work. It can work if we do all of the above, if we realize our interdependence, our interdependence north and south, east and west, but also past and future." <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107830">— At a January 2016 water event.</em></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107831">"Some people say it's one of my pet projects. That's not true. It's a challenge that's needed to deal with California. ... I didn't invent these problems. In fact, I'd be happy if there were no problems." <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107832">— In May 2015, discussing the tunnels and his failed attempt at building a peripheral canal in 1982.</em></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107833">"Until you've put a million hours into it, shut up. ... Or maybe they just wasted their time. It's government; they sit there and play tiddlywinks. ... Let's assume they wasted a quarter of the time. They were on their cellphones. That's still 750,000 hours." <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107834">— At the May 2015 event, on the project's critics and the amount of time that planners have invested.</em></div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107835"><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107836">— Jeremy P. Jacobs</em></div></section></section></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107837">Brown's administration has emphasized that the tunnels will help the delta's ecosystems. The WaterFix's website claims a primary objective is helping the "suffering" environment by protecting fish from the pumps in the south delta, which draw from existing canals and are harmful to fish migration. The tunnels will bypass those canals, moving the water directly to Clifton Court Forebay for export south.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107838">"The current pumps are extremely powerful, causing harmful reverse flows, trapping endangered fish and pulling them toward predators," the WaterFix fact sheet states. "We can't let endangered species go extinct."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107839">The Trump administration's biological opinions last month concluded that the first phase of the project, construction of the tunnels, would not jeopardize any of the 16 threatened species or adversely affect their habitat in the delta. The final report seemed to back away from findings on the delta smelt in the draft versions, which officials attributed to an additional 1,800 acres of habitat restoration to which the state has committed.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107840">The conclusions by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service also rely on California EcoRestore, a program intended to go hand in hand with the tunnels to restore 30,000 acres of the delta.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107841">Environmentalists are quick to poke holes in all of it. For one, EcoRestore was born after another comprehensive plan for the tunnels and habitat, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, was scrapped.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107842">And the primary scientific analysis by the agencies is flawed, said Jonathan Rosenfield, lead scientist for the Bay Institute. The conclusion that habitat restoration works for species like the delta smelt is speculative, he said. Conversely, allowing freshwater to flow into, through and out of the delta is scientifically proven to help the smelt, and many other threatened species.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107843">"It's still very unclear whether the habitat restoration they are talking about will positively affect any of the endangered species, and it is almost certain to have no effect on some threatened species," Rosenfield said. "You can't substitute something that is entirely speculative for something that is known to work."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107844">Environmental and fishing groups including the Bay Institute and Natural Resources Defense Council have already challenged the opinions in court, in the first of what is expected to be many lawsuits if the tunnels move ahead. The coalition contended the agencies ignored the best available science (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/stories/1060056886/" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107845"><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107846">Greenwire</em></a>, June 30).</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107847">U.S. EPA has highlighted the same issue. In an August 2014 letter, then-EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said the tunnels could run afoul of the Clean Water Act while questioning habitat restoration as an effective mitigation measure.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107848">"We are concerned over the sole reliance on habitat restoration for ecosystem recovery, recognizing that existing freshwater diversions and significantly diminished seaward flows have played a significant role in precluding the recovery of Bay Delta ecosystem processes and declining fish populations," he wrote (<a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060005063/" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107849"><em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107850">Greenwire</em></a>, Aug. 29, 2014).</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107851">Further, the agencies were clear that their findings applied to the construction of the tunnels, but not their <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107852">operation</em>, leading some critics to say they punted.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107853">Still, the project can move forward for now. Its main beneficiaries — and those who would be responsible for paying for most of it — will vote this fall.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107854">Four entities would be the main beneficiaries of the project: Metropolitan, the Santa Clara Valley Water District in the Bay Area, and two primarily agricultural providers in the San Joaquin Valley: Kern County Water Agency and Westlands Water District.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107855">The politically powerful Westlands has been reluctant to commit to the WaterFix, saying its board will likely vote on it in September.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107856">"If the analysis performed after release of biological opinions for the project does not demonstrate a significant water supply benefit, I am confident the Westlands board of directors will decide to not participate in the project," Westlands General Manager Tom Birmingham said in an email.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107857">"Westlands has consistently stated that it will not obligate itself to billions of dollars of debt unless it is reasonably certain that the district's water supply will be restored."</div><h3 style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107858">Competing monuments?</h3><aside style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px 20px 20px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: left; max-width: 620px; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107859"><img src="https://www.eenews.net/image_assets/2017/07/image_asset_19452.jpg" alt="Jerry Brown presentation on Flood and Dam safety. Photo credit: California State Transportation Authority " style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: 620px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107860" data-id="afbf7d4a-d8cb-84b3-25e6-7ec142d956e6"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12px; margin: 3px 2px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107861">Brown at a press conference on water infrastructure following the near catastrophe at Oroville Dam in February. <span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107862">California State Transportation Authority </span></div></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107863">It's been more than 40 years since Brown first became governor, and the delta problem isn't going anywhere. The tunnels — along with his effort to build a high-speed rail system — represent the type of concrete monument that has always eluded him.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107864">To proponents of a delta solution, it's now or never. And they see courage in Brown's willingness to keep pushing.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107865">"He's the only one, because of his earlier attempt at this, who really has had the chops to do it," Mount said. "If you don't make a decision in this governor's term and move forward, it is highly unlikely that the next governor will take this on. Every governor who has tried before has been chewed to bits."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107866">But in order to build them, he'll likely need Westlands — public enemy No. 1 for environmentalists. And despite Brown's climate change work, greens are quick to criticize the tunnels as catering to powerful interests over both the health of the delta and the state as a whole.</div><aside style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 4px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-color: rgb(152, 177, 203); margin: 0.2em 0px 20px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; max-width: 300px; width: 300px; position: relative;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107867"><section style="background-color: transparent; border: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-box-shadow: none; box-shadow: none;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107868"><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 21.53845977783203px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 20px 40px 20px 20px; vertical-align: baseline; counter-reset: list-header-num 0; max-width: 600px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.431; box-sizing: border-box;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107869"><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; z-index: 1; text-indent: 2.25em;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107870">Because those dams and reservoirs were not built, the State Water Project has never been able to fulfill the promises of Jerry's father.</div></section></section><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 12.923077583312988px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.66667em 20px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); display: block; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.16667em;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107871">Jonas Minton, Senior Water Policy Advisor, Planning and Conservation League</span></aside><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107872">"This tarnishes Brown's legacy," said Patricia Schifferle, a longtime environmental activist. "He is doing what he perceives as a way to get accolades from his father's vision, but it misses the mark. He tarnishes not only his legacy, but also, I believe, his father's."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107873">The deeper irony is that Brown already has a monument on the scale of his father's State Water Project.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107874">Brown's decision in the early 1980s to designate the state's northern rivers under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protected hundreds of miles of rivers from dams and development in perpetuity — dams that Westlands and others were counting on.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107875">"Those dams and reservoirs were to provide the remaining large amounts of water to supply the State Water Project," Minton of the Planning and Conservation League said. "Because those dams and reservoirs were not built, the State Water Project has never been able to fulfill the promises of Jerry's father."</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107876">To Minton and others, that should be Brown's legacy on water. And it didn't take a single bucket of concrete.</div></section><section style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 2px 0px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-color: rgb(152, 177, 203); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: Arial, sans-serif;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107877"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107878">Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/GreenwireJeremy" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107879">@GreenwireJeremy</a></span> <span style="background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 1px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0.65em; vertical-align: baseline;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107880">Email: <a href="mailto:jjacobs@eenews.net" style="vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107881">jjacobs@eenews.net</a></span></section><section style="background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid rgb(225, 225, 225); margin: 50px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 2em; vertical-align: baseline; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 0px 20px; border-top-left-radius: 4px; border-top-right-radius: 4px; border-bottom-right-radius: 4px; border-bottom-left-radius: 4px; position: relative; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107882"></section></section><div class="signature" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499709316933_107262"><div><br></div></div></div></body></html>