Posted on 03/30/2012 1:03:37 AM PDT by blueplum
(orginally pub 2/20, edited 2/29.)
From his driveway along the Sacramento River south of Freeport, the view to the east offers a peek at the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. When that snow melts, it flows relentlessly by, just across the levee road from Stone's front windows.
From the state and federal governments' point of view, his 20-acre property in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is an ideal spot for one of the five large pumping stations they're proposing to feed what may be the largest water tunnel ever contemplated in North America.
....Twin 33-foot-diameter tunnels would carry a portion of the Sacramento River's flow deep under the Delta on a 37-mile path underground to the present head of the California Aqueduct, near Tracy....
...A similar project known as the Peripheral Canal was in the original plan for the State Water Project, dating back to the 1950s. But it was rejected by California voters in 1982...
...This time, the DWR maintains that existing state water law gives it the power to approve the project without a public vote...
...Christian Frenzel, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., and an expert on large tunneling projects...said it may also pose unique challenges because of the loose soils likely to be encountered....
...The project could be too large for the tunneling industry to absorb in one go...Sanchez and his team are looking at breaking the tunneling into numerous segments that would be awarded to different contractors. He expects that the team will have to bid the project worldwide.
...The goal is to start digging in 2015 and finish in 2025...
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/20/4276513/water-tunnels-would-be-huge-project.html#storylink=cpy
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Will probably contribute to global warming.
Only capitalism contributes to global warming and environmental damage. Gov't projects are divine and free from such evil.
Once they finish off the farmers with the Delta Smelt and get the land to the “right” developers for a song, this will be the water supply for California’s version of Chinese Ghost Cities to be built along the high speed rail corridor.
California is still jealous of the Massachusetts Big Dig, so we are finding ways to waste $20 billion dollars on a worthless boondoggle. I mean, if they won’t let us waste it on a bullet train to no-where, then bay damn, California will just waste $20 billion on something else!
Way to go, California. I have confidence we can waste more money faster than anybody else.
The only down side is that if this was a shovel ready job, we could have made the Cali unemployment rate look good for the Commie-Muslim-in-Chief. Oh well, the SEIU Nazis can’t have everything.
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