The Trump administration said Wednesday that it will not support a massive water project proposed by California, the latest and most serious blow for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to re-engineer the state’s water system by building two giant water tunnels.
“The Trump administration did not fund the project and chose to not move forward with it,” Russell Newell, spokesman for the U.S. Interior Department, said in an email.
Asked if that meant the Trump administration did not support California’s tunnels project, Newell said yes.
Brown wants California water districts to pay $16 billion to build two, 35-mile-long tunnels to divert part of the state’s largest river, the Sacramento, to supply water to the San Francisco Bay Area and central and Southern California.
The Obama administration backed the project, but the tunnels plan ran into its biggest obstacles yet last month, when two key water districts opted not to pay for it.