Court Blocks Delta Tunnel Drilling Once Again
By Dan Bacher |
acramento, CA — In the latest legal battle in the fight to stop the Delta Tunnel, a Sacramento judge has rejected another attempt by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to lift an injunction that blocks DWR from conducting geotechnical investigations that DWR claims are essential to planning for the proposed Delta Conveyance Project (DCP).
“The court issued the injunction in June 2024 based on DWR’s admission that it had not complied with the 2009 Delta Reform Act as required by law,” according to a press statement from Restore the Delta. “DWR later sought an order modifying the injunction to allow it to proceed with a smaller subset of the planned geotechnical work. The court denied that request in 2024.”
“DWR appealed, and that appeal is pending. DWR also attempted to demonstrate Delta Reform Act compliance by certifying a portion of the geotechnical work in a submission to the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC). That effort resulted in an opinion from the DSC to the effect that proceeding with the proposed work would not violate the Delta Reform Act,” the group stated.
Armed with the DSC’s opinion, DWR returned to the Superior Court in March 2025, again requesting that the injunction be modified or dissolved to allow drilling and other exploratory activities to proceed in the Delta.
The petitioners – the San Francisco Baykeeper, Restore the Delta, Delta counties and agencies, among others – vigorously opposed DWR’s motion.
On April 9, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Stephen Acquisto denied DWR’s request, explaining:
"[DWR] is now asking again for permission to proceed with some of the geotechnical work even though it has not yet certified the DCP. Proceeding in this manner would conflict with the terms of the preliminary injunction, as well as the legal analysis on which it is premised."
The court declined to stay its injunction order based on reconsideration of the same issues now pending before the Court of Appeal, and it underscored DWR’s failure to comply with the Delta Reform Act:
"Although the geotechnical work will yield additional data that will provide further specificity to the project, [DWR] has not satisfactorily explained why any additional data and specificity is required to satisfy Delta Reform Act standard. . . . Given all the data, studies, explanations, and project specifications contained in the EIR, it would appear that [DWR] should already have the means to comply with injunction and proceed with the geotechnical work anytime it chooses by self-certifying the DCP as a whole."
Attorneys Osha Meserve and Tom Keeling – who represent the Counties of San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Yolo, and Solano, among other agencies – observed: “DWR’s obstinate refusal to comply with California law and its squandering of public resources to avoid compliance with the injunction are unconscionable. Rather than attempting to resuscitate this zombie project, an ill-fated 19th-century approach to a 21st-century crisis in the Delta, DWR should pursue rational, cost-efficient and readily available solutions. Californians deserve much better that this environmentally destructive, legally deficient, and economically untenable tunnel project.”
“After more than $700 million in expenditures on some form of the Delta Tunnel, DWR has nothing to show for it than a series of failed attempts to circumvent protections for the Delta and its communities,” explained Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. “Enough is enough.”
The Delta Conveyance Project (DCP) is a 45-mile-long underground tunnel that would divert water from the Sacramento River at Hood and Courtland, bypassing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It would then take the water to Bethany Reservoir and then to the California Aqueduct. The project would cost over $20 billion to build.
The Department of Water Resources recently claimed in its Delta Tunnel Update that it’s a “myth” that “DWR intends to increase deliveries through the Delta from current levels, even during droughts.”
However, written testimony from a Department of Water Resources engineer submitted to a State Water Resources Control Board hearing on the DCP tells a much different story. His testimony reveals that the project will indeed maximize deliveries from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, “accelerating the death spiral of the already beleaguered estuary,” according to an analysis by the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN).
The testimony of DWR engineer Amardeep Singh states that the DCP will increase water deliveries from the Delta by 22%.
“DCP operation will not decrease water supply for Central Valley Project (CVP) contractors and will increase water supply for SWP Table A contractors by 22 percent,” he states on page 2 of his testimony.
Then on page 20 of his testimony, Singh again clearly states, “Finally, DCP operation will not decrease water supply for CVP contractors and will increase water supply for SWP Table A contractors by 22 percent.”
Moreover, during drought periods when fish are already strained by low flows and high temperatures, the DCP would increase deliveries by 24%: static1.squarespace.com/...
“This project is a blatant attempt to maximize exports from the Delta for the benefit of large development and agricultural interests in Southern California and Kern County,” said Max Gomberg, a California Water Impact Network board member and Senior Policy Advisor. “Delta communities, tribes, local farmers and our iconic salmon are already suffering from inadequate freshwater flows. Jacking up exports by 22% would be the estuary’s death knell.”
Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations are now in their worst crisis ever, due to massive water exports to corporate agribusiness and Southern California water agencies, combined with other factors including pollution, drought and the impacts of climate change,
On April 15, 2025, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) recommended a complete closure of California’s commercial salmon fisheries for the third year in a row. It also recommended an extremely limited ocean recreational fishing season.
The data from the PFMC documents the abysmal situation that Sacramento River Chinook salmon, once the driver of the West Coast salmon fishery, are now in.
Between 1996-2005 the average return for fall-run Chinook on the mainstem Sacramento River was 79,841 spawning salmon. In 2023 that number fell drastically to only 3,560 salmon – a 95% decline.
Similarly, spring-run Chinook have also experienced a staggering 95% decline due to a lack of cold water flows in California’s salmon rivers. The average wild and hatchery spring-run return plummeted from 28,238 fish in 2021 to just 1,231 salmon in 2023.
“We’ve already had excessive water diversions. The solution is not more salmon killing projects like Gavin Newsom’s Sites Reservoir and Delta Tunnel that will take even more water from our salmon rivers in California,” concluded Scott Artis, Executive Director of the Golden State Salmon Association (GSSA).
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