Governor Gavin Newsom’s revised budget plan, introduced last week, included a package to streamline a project central to securing California’s water future.
The Governor unveiled a budget trailer bill to streamline approval processes for the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), which will modernize the infrastructure used to move water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other areas of the state.
The proposal will help streamline administrative processes that add costs and delays to the project while balancing the environmental protections to help protect the Delta’s habitats and communities.
“Modernizing California’s water supply is not only vital to our economy but also long overdue,” said Jennifer Barrera, president and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce. “We appreciate the Governor’s proposal to remove barriers to innovation while both protecting the environment and meeting both regulatory and operational requirements.”
Delta Conveyance Project
The Delta Conveyance Project will support and enhance the State Water Project’s operation as the backbone of California’s water infrastructure network, providing a reliable supply of affordable, high-quality water for homes, farms, and businesses.
The project involves constructing a tunnel system to transport water from the Sacramento River to the southern Delta, where it can be delivered using existing infrastructure for supplying water to areas including Southern California, the Bay Area, and the Central Valley.
This essential climate adaptation project will capture and move water during high storm flows, allowing the state to store more water for use during droughts.
Estimates show that if the DCP had been operational in 2024, it could have captured roughly 941,000 acre-feet of water from January to June, enough to supply more than 9.5 million people or more than 3.1 million households for one year.
The most recent DCP benefit-cost analysis shows that doing nothing will cost California billions of dollars and jeopardize the water source for millions of state residents and more than 750,000 acres of farmland.
The significant challenges to future water supply reliability from failing to move forward on the DCP include:
- More frequent and larger water shortages;
- More mandatory restrictions;
- Higher water rates due to more expensive alternative supplies;
- More land fallowing;
- Higher food prices;
- Loss of jobs.
Californians for Water Security
To secure the state’s water supply, the CalChamber is a longstanding member of Californians for Water Security, a growing coalition representing more than 12,000 California citizens and more than 80 organizations comprised of business leaders, labor, family farmers, local governments, water experts, infrastructure groups, taxpayer associations, and others who support the plan to fix California’s broken water distribution system.
The coalition is waging an active advertising, grassroots lobbying, social media and public advocacy campaign to support this important project to fix California’s aging water distribution infrastructure and improve water reliability and security throughout the state.
