Last Tuesday, the California Legislature cast a vote on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s controversial water tunnel project in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by not voting at all.

A couple of bills meant to speed up the process were allowed to die in committee before reaching the state Assembly. Opponents of the project consider it a victory in a fight to protect the water of the delta and the towns that live along its banks.

The delta town of Isleton sits frozen in time, a relic from its “Old West” past. It may be a little quiet these days, but it’s no ghost town — yet. It all depends on the river that runs alongside the town.

“Well, the history of Isleton is really deep in the river,” said Iva Walton. “Isleton used to be the main stop on the steamboat between Sacramento and San Francisco. So, it has a long history of depending on the traffic on the river.”

Walton owns the Mei Wah Beer Room, a former Chinese saloon and brothel in the 1800s. The whole town relies on people visiting the delta, and the proposal to bury a giant tunnel to siphon off billions of gallons of water farther up the Sacramento River to send to Southern California cities and Central Valley farms has drawn the ire of many people living along the delta.

“I think, in general, people are aware that it would be bad for the environment, for the property, the land, and the tourism that comes out here, if the tunnels were to drain a lot of the water from here,” Walton said. “It just seems ridiculous to take from something that is a fragile environment. There has to be other options.”

Still, Newsom has made it his key climate resilience initiative. In his May budget revision, he included a pair of bills that would make things go faster by exempting it from CEQA, simplifying permitting, allowing the state to acquire land, authorizing bonds to pay for the project, and limiting future legal challenges to the tunnel.

His office released a statement saying: “For too long, attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape, burdened with unnecessary delay. We’re done with barriers — our state needs to complete this project as soon as possible, so that we can better store and manage water to prepare for a hotter, drier future. Let’s get this built.” 

“Barriers are put in its way,” said Jon Rosenfield. “Those barriers being the state’s laws that everyone else needs to comply with.  But the governor seems determined to try to circumvent those laws to get his tunnel built.”

Rosenfield is science director for SF Baykeeper, one of the groups opposing the tunnel for the damage they think it would inflict on already faltering fish populations downstream in the delta. But he thinks it is the project’s whopping price tag that caused legislators to let the bills die without a vote.

“I think it means there’s not a lot of support for the Delta Conveyance Project,” Rosenfield said. “I think the majority party, which is the governor’s own party in the legislature, is rightfully concerned about the cost of living. And taking on another $60-100 billion project that doesn’t really address our problems, that would still require more money to address, is not a winning proposition at this time, or ever.”

It’s also not a winning proposition in Isleton, where protecting the river is considered vital.

“It’s an amazing place and I would hate to see it go away,” said Walton.

If approved, the tunnel would run 45 miles from the Sacramento River to an existing reservoir near Livermore, before heading south via the California Aqueduct. Construction probably couldn’t begin until 2029 and would take at least 15 years to complete.

First, the project will have to undergo the normal regulatory process, at least for now.

Newsom said he would like to see the tunnel fully entitled by the time he leaves the governor’s seat. There are major political forces at work and no one seems to think this will be the end of it.