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For every $1 spent building the controversial Delta tunnel, $2.20 of benefits will be generated for the water consumers of California over 100 years.
That was the finding announced last week by the California Department of Water Resources for its proposed Delta Conveyance Project. Working with independent researchers, they released a report that tallies the costs and benefits of the tunnel.
At this point, the benefit-cost analysis report is a way for planners to grasp the scope of the project and determine the worthiness of continuing to plan it.
The massive civil engineering program would extend the State Water Project, the system of aqueducts that carries fresh water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms and cities in Southern California.
The project would relocate the system’s intake point from the Bethany Reservoir south of the Delta to the Sacramento River at the top and would be built over a 15-year construction period. It is expected to open in 2045, with the benefits projected over 100 years of use.
A freshwater bypass has been proposed by several California governors, but the current tunnel plan is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to doomsday projections of saltwater inundation of the Delta from rising sea levels and earthquakes.
The controversy over diverting 6,000 cubic feet per second of fresh snowmelt straight from the Sacramento River at a point before it reaches the vast wildlife estuary has flared protests from tribes, fisheries and environmentalists.
“We have submitted to the California Water Resources Control Board our change in point of diversion application, and that typically triggers a degree of protests from other entities who are concerned about the impact of the project on other beneficial uses,” DWR director Karla Nemeth said on May 16. “We are working very intensely to settle out those protests with parties.”
Scott Artis, director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, spoke against the tunnel at a press event in April, saying the salmon’s freshwater is going to farmers.
“Over 1.6 million acres of almonds, thirsty almonds planted in arid regions that require salmon water all year round, were reported in 2022. Meanwhile, we have staggering salmon declines. This is what’s heartbreaking. It’s a travesty of what’s happening to the salmon fishery. A state trying to use 1950s-style infrastructure water projects to solve a 21st century problem is not the answer,” he said. “Sites Reservoir, the Delta tunnel. That is not the answer.”
Carrie Buckman, DWR environmental program manager, said the tunnel would enhance environmental protections. It would allow pumping water in the South Delta to be reduced to protect fish species while pumping much needed water from the North through the tunnel during high flows.
“It gives the State Water Project more operational flexibility and benefits to the environment,” she said. “The monetary benefits to this protection were not included in the benefit-cost analysis.”
“Our analysis also considers longer term changes in water quality in the Delta,” said David Sunding, emeritus professor at UC Berkeley, who led the benefit-cost analysis. “Those are expected to be quite modest.”
“The Delta Conveyance Project passes the benefit-cost test readily, with benefits that are more than double the cost,” Sunding said. “The project enables ongoing demands to be satisfied and water supply reliability to be maintained.”
The Tri-Valley’s Zone 7 Water Agency, which receives water from the State Water Project, issued a statement on Friday praising analysis and the benefits cited for the Delta tunnel project.
“The State Water Project is vital to our community as it provides 70% of the water supply used to enhance the quality of life, economic vitality, and environmental health to our region. The Delta Conveyance Project will modernize the State Water Project and ensure water supply reliability for our community,” Zone 7 General Manager Valerie Pryor said in a statement.
Last week’s announcement also included an updated price tag for the project. It is now $20.1 billion, up from the 2020 starting projection of $16 billion, which the analysis blames on inflation.
Nemeth mentioned that state water contractors or public water agencies that are participating in the project need to look at this report and plug it into their own water resources and financial planning for their service area before they decide on the project.
“We are looking at the end of 2026 as a potential decision point for, you know, actually funding the project. Those are the big dollars,” she said.
“We are also anticipating supplemental design innovations to drop project costs by about 1.2 billion,” Sunding said.
The monetary costs include construction, future operations and maintenance, as well as the costs for environmental mitigation and a Delta community benefit fund of $200 million. Non-monetary costs include local impacts, increased traffic congestion, reduced air quality and noise during the period of construction.
Calculation of benefits involved modeling scenarios for sea level rise and earthquakes.
Sunding showed a hydrologic model that projected a 1.8-foot sea level rise by 2070, in which there was a 22% expected reduction of State Water Project deliveries.
“However, State Water Project yields with the tunnel under those same 2070 climate conditions restores 403,000-acre-feet of project yields, so it doesn’t go all the way toward fully mitigating the effects of climate change but restores a lot of what would otherwise be lost,” Sunding said.
The analysis used an earthquake scenario that envisions a 1-in-500-year earthquake event that results in 50 levee breaches and 20 islands flooded in the Delta. Without the tunnel, the analysis estimates there would be an outage on average of about 203 days.
“So, no State Water Project deliveries at all following 20 islands being flooded,” said Sunding.
Beyond that, there would be an increase of salinity in the water for another 340 days, “A total of 543 days of either no water at all or reduced water quality,” he said.
With the tunnel outcomes are much better, he said. Under the analysis, the State Water Project continues to operate business as usual, with the same level of reliability and water quality as before the earthquake.
Sunding listed other advantages to the tunnel, including the ability of urban agencies to fill their storage more frequently to protect against drought years. Farmers would be disincentivized to pump groundwater if more surface water is available. The water moving through the state delivery system would be cleaner and have less salinity, reducing the need for extra water processing or flushing salt from croplands, he said.
There are 27 million people in California that are served in the State Water Project service territory, said Sunding.
“The State Water Project has an annual GDP of about $2.8 trillion, which is larger than the economies of Canada, Italy and Brazil, just behind the UK and France,” he said. “So obviously, a lot of goods and services are produced in the State Water Project service area. At present, the project is running a level of deliveries of about 2.56-million-acre feet per year to urban and agricultural consumers.”
“The reality is that climate is going to challenge water affordability across the state, and our ability to design projects that provide affordable solutions has never been more critical,” Nemeth said. “Three out of every four disadvantaged Californians are served by the State Water Project, and almost three-fourths of disadvantaged Californians would be served by the tunnel.”
Editor’s note: Embarcadero Media Foundation East Bay editorial director Jeremy Walsh contributed to this story.
