Other Tunnel Projects Pave Way for CA WaterFix
California's water infrastructure must be maintained and updated to capture, move and store adequate supplies for homes, businesses and farms. California WaterFix proposes to use a modernized system to make our state water system work better for native fish in the Delta and for water users.
The plan would construct two tunnels to move high quality fresh water from the northern part of the Delta to the start of the California Aqueduct in the south Delta for delivery around the state.
CA WaterFix is not the first project to use large underground tunnels to move water. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the first-ever tunnel under the Bay was constructed in 2015 to transport drinking water from Yosemite National Park, replacing an aging pipeline. In Portland and Washington, D.C., underground tunnels have been constructed to move wastewater and stormwater. With an outside diameter of 45 feet at its widest point, the proposed CA WaterFix tunnels are similar in size to a number of infrastructure projects.
Many of these other projects have had to successfully address complex geology, seismic deformations, and high groundwater pressure, among other challenges. Lessons learned from these other large infrastructure projects will help to inform the implementation of the proposed CA WaterFix.
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