Newsom to water officials on Delta Conveyance tunnel: ‘We’ve got to finish the job’
On his first day in office in January 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom took his office on a surprise visit of the Monterey Park Tract in Ceres, whose contaminated wells invoked “screaming headlines” and made an “indelible impression” on the incoming governor.
The fact that more than 1 million people “in the wealthiest state and the wealthiest democracy God has ever conceived” lacked access to clean drinking water inspired him to overhaul the state’s water infrastructure, Newsom said Thursday at an Association of California Water Agencies conference.
Over the next seven years, his administration fast-tracked projects like the Delta Conveyance tunnel and spent hundreds of millions to shore up the state’s climate defenses, like removing dams on the Klamath River to restore salmon populations, negotiating with Arizona and Nevada to preserve water from the rapidly shrinking Colorado River, and restoring the Salton Sea.
The issue of water — who controls its supplies and how it is transported — is a political issue that has long been California’s “forever problem,” Newsom said.
“It seems like forever ago, I was lieutenant governor, watching then-Gov. Jerry Brown struggling with managing Mother Nature, who bats last and bats a thousand,” he said, describing his predecessor’s experience with droughts. “She’s chemistry, biology and physics.”
The 45-mile Delta Conveyance tunnel, which would funnel water via the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms and cities in Southern California, has been beset by delays due to litigation over environmental concerns and other regulatory challenges.
Newsom has long argued that constructing the tunnel and the Sites Reservoir storage project in Maxwell, which would store up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water for water agencies throughout the state, are critical for ensuring Californians’ access to water as climate change has made the “dries (droughts) dryer, and the wets (floods) a lot wetter.”
“We’ve got to get that done, and we’ve got to finish the job, as it relates to all of these folks that are still struggling, hundreds of thousands of people desperate for access to safe, clean drinking water,” Newsom said of the Delta tunnel.
The Delta Stewardship Council, the state body overseeing the project, recently rejected appeals from groups that were suing on the basis that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act, which Newsom claimed as a victory even as the California Supreme Court refused to review an appellate court ruling rejecting his request for a bond to finance the tunnel project.
The governor’s overview of his water policy was likely one of his last chances to frame his state climate record before he leaves office at the end of the year and is then expected to launch a campaign for president in 2028. In his remarks, he acknowledged that much of his record hinges upon cooperation from the state’s powerful water agencies and could be undercut by the Trump administration, which has opposed parts of his climate agenda.
“Success is not a place or definition, it’s a direction. And so we’ll continue on this journey together in different roles, in different capacities,” Newsom said. “But again, you’re the real deal. You’re that last mile. You’re the folks that deliver on what we promote and what we promise you are the ones that not only get it, but you get things done.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 2:27 PM.
