Walters: Legislature slows Newsom’s fast-tracking of Delta Tunnel project

Repeatedly Gavin Newsom has sought legislative approval of his high-priority program proposals within the annual state budget process even though they often have nothing to do with the budget The unique rules governing the budget and its accompanying trailer bills allow them to be enacted speedily bypassing numerous parliamentary hurdles and vote thresholds that other law must endure The Legislature controlled by Newsom s fellow Democrats generally allows him to use the budget process in part because legislators often employ the same shortcuts for their own priorities Their underlying motive for the sneaky use or misuse of the budget process is to avoid prolonged analysis and debate that might if the bills contents are fully vetted make them more formidable to enact The trailer bills often contain favors for interest groups that would be demanding to justify in a more transparent process Last month while unveiling a revised state budget Newsom questioned the Legislature to attach statute that would fast-track the highly controversial project to move Sacramento River water to the California Aqueduct without it flowing through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta renewing a tactic that failed two years go First proposed as a peripheral canal more than a half-century ago it morphed into twin tunnels and after Newsom s electoral contest a single tunnel Its purpose has also evolved from a mechanism to increase water deliveries to Southern California to one that would Newsom and others argue improve the reliability of deliveries For too long attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape burdened with unnecessary delay Newsom disclosed We re done with restrictions Our state requirements to complete this project as soon as achievable so that we can better store and manage water to prepare for a hotter drier future Let s get this built It would take a book a big book to fully explain all of the project s environmental financial and political aspects Briefly however while advocates say that isolating water conveyance from the Delta would improve habitat for fish and other wildlife opponents contend that less water flowing through the estuary would further degrade its water quality While Newsom and other supporters often depict the tunnel as a stand-alone project it is inexorably related to other aspects of California s very complex water picture For instance as it touts a tunnel that would doubtless reduce Delta flows the state also is pressuring farmers to reduce diversions from the San Joaquin River and its tributaries to increase flows through the Delta Those two efforts are not officially linked but the connection is obvious The long-stalled Delta Conveyance Project the latest of several official names has slowly approached the final pre-construction phase which is why Newsom wished a trailer bill to certainly get a green light Related Articles Letters Delta Conveyance Project will assure Tri-Valley water supply Wild pigs increase around the Bay Area causing headaches for homeowners parks and water agencies How the Boulder fire attack unfolded Calm confusion chaos he s out to kill us Pebble Beach Company launches historic clean water initiative to protect Carmel Bay Sonoma Water begins inflation of Russian River rubber dam to backing regional water supply However his proposal at once rekindled the political jousting between advocates and opponents and the pressure on legislative leaders over whether the tunnel should be addressed in a trailer bill This week the Legislature punted its members clearly leery about taking on such a high-profile and infinitely controversial issue through the budget process especially since Democratic legislators are very divided roughly along north-south geographic lines With the budget process now off limits the warring factions may duke it out through the normal legislative process although there is a theory in particular circles that the Department of Water Tools could proceed because the State Water Project was approved by voters years ago The Legislature specifically approved the project as a canal more than years ago but its opponents challenged it in a referendum and won This could be as the inimitable Yogi Berra once observed d j vu all over again Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist