PART 2: ON THE CUTTING EDGE

Looking at the technology that will build the tunnel

A rendering of the tunnel boring machine that will be used to construct the 45-mile Delta Conveyance Project. The machine simultaneously carves through rock about 100 feet below the surface while installing precast concrete rings that will form the permanent wall of the tunnel. (Delta Conveyance Design & Construction Authority/California Department of Water Resources via Bay City News)

By Ruth Dusseault • Bay City News

October 23, 2024

IF THE DELTA Conveyance Tunnel is granted all necessary permits; if the California Department of Water Resources can create a plan to raise $20 billion; if the Water Resources Control Board extends water rights to the State Water Project; and if a dozen or more lawsuits are won; then construction on one of this century’s most ambitious civil engineering projects will commence.

The year would be 2035. It would be preceded by five years of infrastructure upgrades in the Delta region. Stronger bridges and streets will lay the way for machines of every scale to safely traverse the tunnel’s 45-mile path from Sacramento to the Bethany pump station at Stockton.

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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.