Around the glitter of the holidays, Gavin Newsom’s ambitious proposal to engineer a water tunnel under the San Joaquin Delta moved a step closer to reality; but there are alternatives to the controversial tunnels, including one proposed by U.S. Representative John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove.

On Dec. 21, the California Department of Water Resources, or DWR, announced its certification of the environmental impact report for the Delta Conveyance Project. Governor Gavin Newsom’s $16 billion plan is designed to draw freshwater from tributaries of the Sierra Nevada and deliver it south to satisfy the thirst of greater Los Angeles.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.