Board member Max Gomberg explains why the DCP is antithetical to the public interest
Press release from C-WIN
In the first of several planned State Water Resources Control Board hearings, California Water Impact Network board member and senior policy advisor Max Gomberg testified that Governor Newsom’s proposed $20+ billion Delta Conveyance Project – popularly known as the Delta Tunnel – would undermine the public interest and further harm ratepayers, communities, and the environment.
“We are living in a time of crisis, both political and environmental,” said Gomberg. “The impacts of these crises fall disproportionately on marginalized people and places already suffering from the greatest environmental degradation. The Delta Conveyance Project would result in even further harms to them and foreclose other investments and strategies for generations.”
Several proponents for the project – including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Santa Clara Valley Water District – lauded the DCP, claiming it would ensure greater water security for the populations they serve. But Gomberg eviscerated that argument, demonstrating the project is simply a stalking horse for the appropriation of more public trust water to accommodate powerful and wealthy business interests. “Make no mistake, while DWR and others may frame this as solely an attempt to build more reliable infrastructure and change a point of diversion, it is very much a petition to appropriate more water, especially and alarmingly during dry years, when impacts to communities and the environment are the greatest,” Gomberg observed in his statement.
Gomberg also noted the SWRCB is constrained in its actions by state law and must proceed accordingly when considering approval of the DCP.
“The [Water Board] must allow parties to present evidence on all aspects of the public interest,” Gomberg said, [including] the economic and social impacts to different communities, along with the full suite of authorities the Board possesses to satisfy the public interest and uphold its legal duties.”
The next SWRCB hearing on the DCP is scheduled for March 24, 2025. Witnesses will begin giving testimony in April and hearings will continue through the Summer.
Gomberg’s full comments are available here.
