Santa Clara Valley Water District rejects Jerry Brown’s twin Delta tunnels plan

Santa Clara Valley Water District rejects Jerry Brown’s twin Delta tunnels planSan Jose Mercury News

In a landmark move closely watched across California, Silicon Valley’s largest water agency on Tuesday voted not to participate in Gov. Jerry Brown’s $17 billion plan to build two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

By a vote of 7-0, the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s board of directors chose instead to adopt a set of principles that endorses a significantly smaller project, with one tunnel that would have less capacity and a lower cost.

“What magnitude of a project makes sense? From our perspective that looks to be something less than originally was envisioned,” said board member Barbara Keegan.

Santa Clara water district rejects Jerry Brown’s twin tunnels plan, urges him to scale down projectSacramento Bee

Silicon Valley’s water district Wednesday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to build twin tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta but said it would support a smaller, less expensive project. A top state official said the Brown administration could support such an approach.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District’s board voted 7-0 to give the Delta plan “conditional support” but only if it involves one tunnel instead of two. The board’s vote indicated the district would be willing eventually to commit more than $200 million to the project. That’s well below the $600 million or more in support it had been considering.

“It’s clearly going to be a smaller project than what was originally proposed,” said board member Gary Kremen.

 

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