January 3, 2024 - Fairfield, CA—On Tuesday, Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA) made the following statement on the California Department of Water Resources’ recent certification finalizing the state environmental review for the proposed Delta Tunnel and reiterating his longtime opposition to the Governor’s proposal:

"As I told the six previous Governors and now Governor Newsom, this tunnel will never be built. The state should not continue spending hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars in pursuit of a multibillion-dollar boondoggle. Tunneling under the Delta to export more water to Southern California risks collapsing the Delta’s earthen levees and inundating this iconic working landscape with saltwater. While I share the Governor’s enthusiasm for modernizing California’s water supply infrastructure, forcing a tunnel on Delta residents ignores better ways to meet our state’s future water needs. I urge the Governor to reconsider this deeply misguided project,” said Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA).

Under President Clinton, Garamendi served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1995 to 1998, overseeing the federal Bureau of Reclamation and California’s Central Valley Project. In Congress, Garamendi has worked to block the Delta Tunnel at every turn by prohibiting any federal permitting or funding for the deeply misguided project. This past February, Garamendi reintroduced the “Stop the Delta Tunnel Act” (H.R.924) with Congressman Josh Harder (D-CA09).

Representing residents of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Congress, Garamendi developed an alternative to the proposed Delta Tunnel, called "Little Sip, Big Gulp: A Water Plan for All of California," that safeguards the Delta and prioritizes water recycling and building new water storage instead of tunnel construction.
Source: Congressman John Garamendi