CA Sierra Club backs Alex Padilla’s water bill, worries about Delta tunnel risk
The Sierra Club California has raised concerns about one of the two new water bills introduced by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, warning that “loopholes” in the current language could allow federal funding to be steered toward large water conveyance projects the group opposes, including California’s controversial Delta tunnel.
The MORE WATER Act, which Padilla unveiled in a news release on Wednesday, would reauthorize federal funding for large-scale water recycling projects and create a new Water Conveyance Improvement Program to benefit existing water conveyance infrastructure across the West.
The measure outlines $450 million for large-scale recycling and reuse grants, $550 million for broader recycling programs, and $500 million for conveyance infrastructure upgrades, plus additional investments in other habitat and restoration activities.
The Sierra Club California says it “adamantly” supports the bill’s big emphasis on water recycling. But it wants to ensure the money will not be diverted to conveyance projects such as the controversial Delta tunnel — a proposed water-export tunnel intended to move water beneath the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to supply farms and cities farther south.
It is a $20 billion plan many environmental advocates strongly oppose over concerns about ecological harm and negative impacts on Delta communities.
“We think that if used improperly, proponents of the Delta conveyance project — the state water contractors — could quietly back-door massive export projects like the Delta Conveyance Project through this bill,” Layne Fajeau, an associate organizer at Sierra Club California, told The Sacramento Bee.
Fajeau said the Sierra Club California welcomes the bill’s $5 billion cap on new projects but worries that water contractors could try to slice large conveyance proposals into smaller phases to keep them under that threshold.
“They could argue in court that they’re structuring the Delta Conveyance Project in a phased approach,” Fajeau said, worrying that the contractors could argue “each individual phase is its own project and less than $5 billion.”
“We just want to make sure that there’s language (in the measure) that says this can’t go to the Delta Conveyance Project,” he continued.
Padilla’s office asserted that the legislation bars funding for any new conveyance project costing more than $5 billion, which it said would make the $20 billion Delta tunnel ineligible. And that any new major project would face years of planning, environmental review and permitting — likely extending beyond the bill’s funding window.
One of the environmental groups that supports the legislature, Environmental Defense Fund, noted “it may be worth considering if more explicit language should be included,” while echoing the office’s position that the bill is narrowly focused on repairing existing infrastructure and expanding water recycling, not financing new megaprojects.
“What this legislation is aimed at is helping to repair existing conveyance facilities in the San Joaquin Valley and to do those repairs in a way that can deliver meaningful benefits to community drinking water systems and ecosystem restoration,” said Ann Hayden, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Resilient Water Systems Program.
But what the Sierra Club California is concerned about is whether the bill’s language leaves enough room for future administrations to interpret the funding rules in ways that could still benefit large conveyance projects — a longstanding fear among environmental groups about piecemealing and phased approvals for big water projects.
“We are unequivocally supportive of federal funding for water recycling, and we believe the $450 million in this bill should actually be a floor and not a ceiling. We would really like to see more funding being given to water recycling,” Fajeau said.
“Our worry is that the state water contractors are going to try whatever they can to get money to finance (the Delta Conveyance Project).”
