The Californer - California: ICYMI: Governor advances Delta Conveyance Project through two key milestones

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Oct 23, 2025

ICYMI: Governor advances Delta Conveyance Project through two key milestones

What you need to know: The Delta Conveyance Project continues to make progress with two key milestones to push the project forward — a certification of consistency submitted to the Delta Stewardship Council and a state appellate court decision allowing pre-construction geotechnical work to continue.

SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom announced two recent key victories to advance the Delta Conveyance Project — a critical infrastructure project to safeguard California's water supplies amid a hotter, drier future. The administration secured a court decision reversing a preliminary injunction that was previously blocking pre-construction geotechnical work. Additionally, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has submitted a certification of consistency for the broader project to the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC). These victories help the Delta Conveyance Project move forward in compliance with the Delta Reform Act — the state law that creates a regulatory framework to protect both the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem and a reliable statewide water supply.

California must quickly complete the Delta Conveyance Project to protect our state's water supplies. No piece of infrastructure is more fundamental to our water supply and economic success. This is the most effective strategy to ensure that the state can continue to deliver water for Californians in future hotter, drier, and more extreme conditions. Enough delays, we must quickly move forward to protect Californians' water supplies, and we look forward to completing this project sooner rather than later.

Governor Gavin Newsom

Fighting for California's water infrastructure

California is expected to lose 10% of its water supply due to hotter and drier conditions, threatening the water supply for millions of Californians — and the reliability of the State Water Project could be reduced as much as 23% percent. Extreme weather whiplash will result in more intense swings between droughts and floods. And California's 60-year-old water infrastructure is not built to respond to these climate impacts. The Delta Conveyance Project will help offset and recover these future climate-driven water losses, and yet, it has been plagued by delays and red tape.

The Delta Conveyance Project would expand the state's ability to improve water supply reliability, while also maintaining fishery and water quality protections. During atmospheric rivers last year, the Delta Conveyance Project could have captured enough water for 9.8 million people's yearly usage.

The Governor has advanced efforts to move the Delta Conveyance Project forward, including DWR's certification of a final environmental impact report in December 2023 and securing financial support from water agencies throughout the state serving a majority of Californians. And while the project has received some necessary permits, its path forward is burdened by complicated regulatory frameworks and bureaucratic delays.

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The importance of protecting the reliability of the State Water Project is too great to allow the Delta Conveyance Project to be mired by unnecessary delays — making last week's wins even more important.

Protecting Californians' water— in the Delta and from the tap

Last week DWR submitted a certification of consistency for the Delta Conveyance Project. The certification — submitted to the Delta Stewardship Council — documents that the Delta Conveyance Project is consistent with the Delta Plan, as required by the Delta Reform Act.

The Delta Reform Act protects two important goals: it protects both the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ecosystem and a reliable statewide water supply. By filing a certification of consistency, DWR confirms that the Delta Conveyance Project can protect both Californians' water supply and their environment. Next, the Delta Stewardship Council will review the submission and make their determination.

Advancing planning and design

Also last week, the California Court of Appeal for the Third District paved the way for the DWR to resume key work related to the planning and design of the Delta Conveyance Project.

Specifically, the court of Appeal ruled that DWR can proceed with key "geotechnical" work — for example, soil boring and related testing — to help refine the Delta Conveyance Project's planning and design.

The court's ruling rejects a tactic that opponents of the Delta Conveyance Project have used to delay key planning and design work for the last year and a half. While that work has been delayed, the Governor and DWR have been working to do everything within their power to protect Californians' water supplies — which is why DWR continues to push forward with the certification of consistency for the Delta Conveyance Project.

The ruling last week rejected a previous decision from a lower court in June 2024 granting a preliminary injunction that had blocked DWR from conducting this preliminary geotechnical work, concluding that DWR was first required to complete the certification-of-consistency process.

In its ruling last week, the Court of Appeal completely vindicated the administration's legal position. The court rejected the argument that the preliminary geotechnical work required a certification of consistency under the Delta Reform Act — a requirement that protected bureaucratic red tape more than the Delta. This decision paves the way for the geotechnical work to proceed after further proceedings in the trial court, with or without the certification of consistency for the Delta Conveyance Project. And the Court of Appeal confirmed that courts should give "great weight" to the judgment of the Delta Stewardship Council — the state agency responsible for protecting the Delta and administering the Delta Reform Act, which had previously rejected opponents' challenges to the geotechnical work.

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Learn more about the Delta Conveyance Project

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