Who’s going to pay for California’s giant water tunnels? Bet you can guess.

The tunnels was a dream of the old man Brown for over 50 years. Millions of taxpayer money has been spent without any solid funding source.

The question of 'who's paying' came to light earlier this month is was revealed that $84 Million had been misappropriated: http://www.sacbee.com/news/sta...

Jeff Davis from the State Water Agency, San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency, talked about Water Districts 'going it alone' and paying for both the Tunnel Project and the Sites Reservoir Project. 'Water Districts paying' is code for 'Rate Payers', which is code for 'Massive Water Bills'.

It's the Developers that are buying cheap land to build houses. The reason the land is cheap is because THERE IS NO WATER .

The State should have started charging Development Impact Fees back in the 60's and they'd have a massive amount in the bank today. But Developers passed out bribes in exchange for mitigation fees.

Now the State has a bunch of houses in SoCal built without a water supply and millions of people in the NorCal that are going to stop the Tunnel Project by whatever means necessary.

Who’s going to pay for California’s giant water tunnels? Bet you can guess

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and SCOTT SMITH Associated Press, Reprinted from the Press Enterprise

SAN FRANCISCO — Water districts and households across California could be compelled to help pay for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plans to build two giant tunnels to ferry water to cities and farms mainly in central and Southern California, under newly revealed plans to shore up funding for the struggling $16 billion project.

The tougher state funding demands pivot from longstanding state and federal assurances that only local water districts that seek to take part in the mega-project would have to pay for the twin tunnels, the most ambitious re-engineering of California’s complex north-to-south water system in more than a half-century.

The Associated Press obtained new documents from the state’s largest agricultural water agency and confirmed the expanded funding demands in phone and email interviews with state and local water officials.

With no major water district yet signing on voluntarily to help pay for the project amid uncertainty about its costs and benefits, state and local promoters of the tunnels now contend that dozens of local water agencies representing millions of Californians are obligated to help foot the bill under their existing contracts.

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While speculation of that arrangement has swirled privately, “this is the first acknowledgement that we’ve heard” from the state that those water agencies would be on the hook, said Paul Gosselin, director of Northern California’s Butte County water district.

His agency would get no water from the tunnels and has been seeking written state and federal guarantees that its customers would not have to pay for them. He’s gotten no such assurances.

“Any of these funding mechanisms has been in a black box — none of it’s been described to us, the contractors, or the public,” Gosselin said.

Brown’s administration intends to exclude from the funding obligation a half-dozen Northern California water districts, like Gosselin’s, that would get no water from the tunnels, although just how hasn’t been worked out, said Lisa Lien-Mager, spokeswoman for the state Natural Resources Agency.

The two tunnels — each 35 miles long and the width of a three-lane highway — would tap into Northern California’s Sacramento River to provide more reliable supplies for points south. Brown says the tunnels would modernize the existing water delivery system built under his father, then-Gov. Pat Brown. The younger Brown is pushing to see his water project launched before he leaves office next year.

But it’s been beset by controversy. Opponents say the tunnels could further threaten struggling native species and drain Northern California dry. Federal auditors also said last week that authorities improperly used $50 million in taxpayer money for the project.

The state’s newly revealed funding plan hinges on its contention that the tunnels would be an update, not a new project. As such, the 29 water districts that get water from the existing state system of aqueducts, reservoirs and pumps would be obligated to help bear the costs of the new tunnels, state and local water officials said Friday.

Rather than deciding whether to opt in to the project, any state water clients that “make an affirmative decision not to participate, it would be up to them to reach an agreement” with some other water contractor to take on their share of the project’s cost, Lien-Mager said.

Asked if California intended to cut off state water deliveries to districts that refuse to help pay for the tunnels, Lien-Mager said only that “opting out would not affect their existing contracts, but their actual water supplies from the SWP could become less reliable in the future,” referring to the current State Water Project.

Read Full Story Here: http://www.pe.com/2017/09/18/w...