Newsom Defies Environmentalist Opposition To Build Badly Needed Water Tunnel

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the West Coast's largest estuary, an awe-inspiring area of wetlands with 700 miles of waterways and 1,100 miles of levees nestled between the San Francisco Bay and the Central Valley south of Sacramento. It's one of the most magnificent places in California—a refuge of orchards, marinas, tin-roofed shacks, plantation homes and tiny historic towns that feels more Deep South than Golden State.

The 1949 movie, All the King's Men—based loosely on the life of Louisiana's populist Gov. Huey Long—was filmed in the Delta and neighboring Stockton....