Who Wins?
This is the first of C-WIN’s new opinion column.
Who Might Build California’s Biggest and Most Expensive Infrastructure Project in Decades?
by Carolee Krieger, C-WIN Executive Director
Cui bono: in politics, that’s always the question to ask. Who benefits? Because someone always does. With any legislation, policy or project, there are always winners – and losers. The games played in Sacramento and Washington are usually zero sum, and we can determine the relative social and civil value of a policy or program by who reaps the greatest advantages.
With Governor Newsom’s Delta Conveyance Project – also known as the Delta Tunnel – both the losers and winners are clear. This massive boondoggle will accelerate water deliveries from the Sacramento / San Joaquin Delta to Southern California at a cost of $40 billion or more, inclusive of debt servicing. And who will fund the project? Ratepayers and taxpayers. Unhappily, they’ll get little for their forced investment. The Delta Tunnel will do nothing to enhance water security for the average citizen. What it will do is ensure maximum deliveries – and maximum profits – to a relative handful of corporate growers and developers.
This fact has been well established, proving that even “progressive” California has its limits when corporate power exerts its full influence. Governor Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump may not see eye-to-eye on many things, but they are in happy accord on the Delta Tunnel. They both want it built. Now.
Which raises a pressing question: how will it get it done? The Delta Tunnel would be one of the country’s greatest excavation projects, requiring a gigantic subterranean tube 43 miles long and 400 feet wide. Naturally, we can expect any number of contractors to bid on such a plum. But who would have the inside track?
It can be assumed the State will look to Washington for help with the DCP, given the State Water Project operates under an existing joint operations agreement with the federal Central Valley Project. Washington’s current meat cleaver approach to reducing federal budgets may make it seem unlikely Trump would support the DCP with either funding or regulatory easing, but remember – he has vowed to stand with Central Valley agribusiness in any dispute over Delta water. And given Trump is transactional to his marrow, we can assume he’ll want a “deal” for throwing his support to the Delta Tunnel. Part of that deal could well be accommodating his most important ally in the private sector: Elon Musk.
How does Musk figure into the DCP? One of his holdings is appropriately named The Boring Company – appropriate not because it fails to garner interest, but because its raison is drilling tunnels through the earth. Musk launched it to implement his “hyperloop” scheme – a mass transportation system for moving both people and freight in pods traveling up to 900 miles an hour via magnetic levitation through low-pressure tubes. Despite much hoopla over hyperloop pilot projects in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, nothing substantive has come of Musk’s hyperloop vision, but the company has designed and built a line of excavation machines, conveyor systems and concrete ring segment deployers that are reputedly fast and efficient; Boring’s latest generation of its proprietary “Prufrock” excavators can reportedly dig up to a mile of tunnel a week.
It's easy to see a scenario where Newsom and Trump – “conspire,” is not too strong a word – to hire the world’s richest man to dig the tunnel that would make the DCP possible. Everyone would get what they want: Newsom would have the capstone project to his administration, Trump would be able to flaunt his “deal making” acumen, and Musk – well, Musk would have more money, power and attention, the clear motivators of his life. California’s agribusiness magnates and developers would have definitive control over our public trust water. And as noted, ratepayers and taxpayers would pay the price.
Californians need to monitor Newsom closely in his final months in office to ensure he doesn’t demonstrate his “reasonableness” by initiating “negotiations” with Trump and his favorite multi-billionaire over the DCP. As always, follow the money. That’s where the water goes.