‘They just think it’s too big’

Jonas Minton of the enviro group Planning and Conservation League told the audience at Monday’s UOP water forum that the state and water exporters should consider building one small tunnel, rather than two large ones, to convey water past the Delta.

The plan right now is to focus analysis on two tunnels, each capable of carrying 7,500 cubic feet per second of water. Combined, that’s 112,200 gallons per second — enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in five seconds. (See this post for visuals.)

That’s too large to reassure opponents that any future guidelines on how much water can be taken will not be bypassed the next time there’s a water crisis in the south San Joaquin Valley, Minton said. He used U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s recent proposal to tweak biological opinions and send more water south as an example.

Feinstein’s proposal “gives no one confidence that a new facility, a huge facility… can be trusted,” Minton said, adding that critics “just think it’s too big.”

His pitch is for study of one tunnel with 3,000 cfs capacity. It’d be cheaper; it would ensure that water would still be exported through the Delta itself, which in turn provides assurance that Delta levees won’t be abandoned; and it would still, like the larger tunnels, provide emergency water supply should the levees fail.

“Potentially, there’s less opposition,” Minton said.

If a 15,000-cfs tunnel (or canal) is pursued, Minton told the crowd — including many students at Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law — “You law students, that’s how you’re going to pay back your loans.”