California's next North vs. South battle over water begins

http://www.insidebayarea.com/bay-area-news/ci_21141334/californias-next-north-vs-south-battle-over-water

Opening a major new chapter in California's decades-old battle over water, Gov. Jerry Brown is scheduled Wednesday to unveil plans to build a $14 billion pair of tunnels to move water more easily from the north to the thirsty south.

The proposal also calls for restoring the linchpin of California's water system, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a vast network of marshes and sloughs that has seen ecological decline as the state's farms and cities have increasingly tapped it for trillions of gallons of water each year.

Under the plan, two huge, side-by-side underground tunnels, each 33 feet in diameter, would carry fresh water 37 miles from the state's largest river, the Sacramento, under the delta to giant federal and state pumps at Tracy.

There it would flow into canals run by the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, which deliver delta water to 25 million Californians, from the Bay Area to San Diego, and to irrigate 3 million acres of farmland.

Construction would start in 2017, with the project completed by 2026.

The project, already being called "the peripheral tunnel," is similar to a plan that voters rejected in 1982. That measure would have authorized building a giant "peripheral canal" over roughly the same area. It sparked a bitter campaign that pitted Northern California voters against Southern California voters.

This time is different, supporters say.