The twin tunnels are best water fix for California

August 2018

Let’s start with this: California WaterFix, Gov. Brown’s $17 billion twin-tunnels project, is the best and most affordable long-term solution to our great state’s water woes. If we’re going to call it a time machine, we should acknowledge it will transport us to a brighter future, where there’s clean, reliable water for generations to come.

The boondoggle rhetoric that has recently appeared in these pages is classic political redirection. Opponents have been serving up nonsense for more than a decade in hopes of derailing California WaterFix. To correct the record and do Californians the justice of having all the facts, we must assert that WaterFix is only one component — albeit necessary and prudent — of the state’s critical State Water Project infrastructure.

The State Water Project provides a reliable supply of clean water to more than 25 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland, and fuels business and industry statewide. It is the nation’s largest state-built, user-financed water project, comprising more than 700 miles of aqueducts, tunnels, siphons and pipelines as well as 34 storage facilities, 30 dams, 23 pumping plants and nine hydroelectric power generation plants.