… For more than half a century, California’s leaders have debated rerouting water around, rather than through, the network of rivers, farmland and marshes of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Newsom’s version would pipe Sacramento River water through a 45-mile bypass to a reservoir on the California Aqueduct. … [T]he Delta Stewardship Council weighed opponents’ many challenges to the project and last week voted six-to-one to require the Department of Water Resources to address just two of them. …  Far bigger obstacles loom: court rulings that have upended California’s financing plans, critical water rights decisions still to come from state regulators, and water agencies that have yet to decide whether the tunnel’s water will be worth the cost. 

Other Delta tunnel news:

• CalMatters (Sacramento, Calif.): Delta tunnel inches forward