DWR Updates Delta Conveyance Project EIR Timeline ​

The Department of Water Resources has announced a revised timeline for the Delta Conveyance Project's environmental review process, marking what we believe is the 47th time the words "revised timeline" have been used in connection with a project that has been some version of "let's build a tunnel under the Delta" since the 1960s.

The updated schedule reflects additional public comment periods and supplemental analysis requested by the Delta Stewardship Council, which is government-speak for "people had opinions and those opinions require expensive consultants to respond to." The new timeline pushes the Final EIR certification into Q3 2026, roughly six decades after someone first sketched a tunnel on a napkin and said "how hard could this be?"

For those keeping score at home, this project has been through more names than a witness protection participant — Peripheral Canal, BDCP, WaterFix, and now Delta Conveyance. Each rebrand comes with fresh environmental documents, new stakeholder processes, and the same fundamental question: "Can we move water from where it is to where the people are without destroying an estuary?" We're still working on that.

What Actually Changed ​

The supplemental analysis primarily addresses updated sea level rise projections and revised biological assessments for Delta smelt, a fish that has become perhaps the most consequential two-inch organism in American infrastructure history. The smelt, for its part, has declined to comment, mostly because there are barely any left.

DWR emphasized that the project design itself hasn't changed — it's still a single tunnel, still roughly 45 miles, still carries 6,000 cfs. The infrastructure is straightforward. It's the 5,000 pages of environmental documentation that keep evolving.

Public Comment ​

The next public comment period opens March 15, 2026. Attendees at previous comment sessions have described the experience as "democracy in action" and also "seven hours I'll never get back."