But now the Brown administration is proposing a major and politically risky change: dropping a 50-year guarantee to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's environment. A centerpiece of the project, the environmental plan included $8 billion to preserve 100,000 acres of wetlands and dozens of other restoration efforts.
The dramatic course correction, whose details have not yet been made public, comes after biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies told the state they won't issue permits for the environmental plan. The reasons, the biologists say, is that the state cannot prove it will restore salmon, smelt, sturgeon and other wildlife struggling for survival in the Delta.
Losing the guarantee of 50 years of environmental restoration would create a substantial political problem for one of Brown's signature projects.
First, it would be easier for environmentalists and other opponents to describe the twin-tunnels plan as little more than a water grab by Southern California, a perception that could make it untenable to Northern Californians.
At the same time, it would also be harder to gain support from water districts around the state -- whom Brown is counting on to pick up the $17 billion cost to build and operate the tunnels. That's because the 50-year "habitat conservation plan" was supposed to guarantee them reliability from endangered species lawsuits and decisions by the federal government that have limited Delta pumping in recent years to protect endangered fish.
Richard Stapler, a spokesman for the California Natural Resources Agency, confirmed Friday that the state in the next few months will release an addendum to the project's environmental impact report that reflects the proposed change.
