Brown should retool project

What Gov. Jerry Brown has been pitching as his California WaterFix is seen by many San Joaquin Valley farmers as a checkbook buster. History may be repeating itself.

Hang around long enough and comets return. Brown is having the same problem he had 35 years ago trying to update the waterworks created in the 1960s by his father, Gov. Pat Brown.

Many farmers think the price is too high and the benefits too low. And they’re not buying.

Last week, the board of the Westlands Water District — the country’s largest agriculture water district — voted not to participate in Brown’s very costly and controversial proposal to reengineer plumbing in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Brown wants to bore two gigantic 35-mile, 40-footwide tunnels through the heart of the West Coast’s largest estuary to siphon fresh water from the Sacramento River before it flows into the delta. The water would be channeled directly into southbound aqueducts at the southern end.

The cost would be $17 billion, plus roughly double that for interest. The project would be paid for by its water users, mainly irrigation districts and customers of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Water for 25 million people and 3 million acres of cropland flows through the delta, or at least is supposed to. The plumbing is basically broken.

The huge water pumps that feed the aqueducts are frequently throttled down or shut off because they gobble up young salmon and other endangered fish.