With a seeming vote of confidence from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – the giant agency that supplies water to about half the state’s 38 million residents – Gov. Jerry Brown appears set to soldier ahead with his $17 billion plan to build two 35-mile-long tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Brown’s view that the tunnels are crucial both to stabilize the Delta ecosystem and to shore up the state’s water distribution system was rejected last week by the board of the Westlands Water District, which voted 7-1 against joining in the “California WaterFix” project. Westlands – the nation’s largest agricultural water district with 600,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Kings counties – had been counted on to cover about $3 billion of the project’s total cost.

But Westlands officials voted “no” after expressing concern both about the high price-tag they’d have to pay and about whether WaterFix truly would make water supplies more consistent and reliable. The water district was the first in the state to decide on whether to sign up for the project, and its decisive early opposition appeared to stun some supporters.

This led to reports that Brown’s legacy project could be all but dead by Oct. 10, when the MWD is scheduled to vote on whether to participate. The agency is expected to cover $4 billion of the project’s cost.

But on Tuesday, MWD leaders indicated that at least for now, they were still supportive. Board member Larry McKenney said it was in MWD’s interest to try to promote confidence in the project going forward, according to a Sacramento Bee report. MWD shares Brown’s view that the project is crucial for long-term water distribution reliability.

Brown’s would-be successors cool to his plan

Yet the MWD reprieve might not save the day for WaterFix. For months, Sacramento insiders have noted that Brown appears far more enthusiastic about the project than other significant players in state politics – including those running to succeed him as governor next year.

Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton reported Tuesday that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Treasurer John Chiang and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had each expressed doubts about the project. Newsom and Chiang worried about its environmental impact on the Delta and beyond, while Villaraigosa suggested bold new conservation programs should be tried to see if they could save enough water to make the tunnels unnecessary.

But even if the Westlands district, Newsom, Chiang and Villaraigosa were all on the WaterFix bandwagon, its future would hardly be assured. Environmentalists have a long history of suing and winning over California water policies. In June, they filed the first two of what could be several federal lawsuits targeting Brown’s project in response to a preliminary go-ahead given by the Trump administration.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Bay Institute and the Golden Gate Salmon Association alleged that the project would wipe out salmon, smelt and other fish and would worsen water quality not just in the Delta but the San Francisco Bay.

While the Trump administration gave initial approval to WaterFix, it too could prove a wildcard. House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and other GOP lawmakers from California have urged the White House to challenge water allocation policies they have long argued favor Delta fish over human beings.

While it didn’t register as significant news in California, Trump’s nomination of David Bernhardt to the No. 2 job in the Interior Department this spring suggested changes in how the federal government deals with water in the Golden State could be in the offing.

As CalWatchdog reported in June, Bernhardt is a Colorado-based partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a law firm which has represented the Westlands Water District in federal lawsuits targeting Interior Department policies. This background and other concerns led 43 Senate Democrats to vote against his confirmation in July.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump’s promise to help Central Valley farmers get more water and to reduce environmentalists’ influence over the federal government got him a

As president, for a variety of reasons, Trump so far has only been able to provide part of the relief on water supplies that many in the Central Valley sought, even in the wake of a winter rain deluge. But Trump has signaled his intent to honor his promise to help the region by choosing David Bernhardt – a veteran of California’s water wars – for the No. 2 job in the Interior Department.

Bernhardt is a Colorado-based partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a multi-state law firm which has on four occasions represented the Central Valley’s Westlands Water District, the largest U.S. irrigation district, in lawsuits targeting Interior Department policies. The law firm has been paid $1.3 million by the water agency since 2011.

Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation is expected this week or soon thereafter, but it may be close to a party-line vote. At a May 17 meeting of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Bernhardt was grilled by ranking Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington and other Democrats over the conflicts of interest he would face because of his history representing Westlands and Cadiz, a Los Angeles land development firm that has fought with federal regulators over its audacious plan to access the water in a Mojave Desert aquifer.

Bernhardt: Effect on jobs should matter in regulatory decisions

At the hearing, Bernhardt repeatedly said he would avoid issues involving former clients unless given the blessing of Interior Department ethics lawyers. But Bernhardt’s remarks in answer to another question explain why he may be such a threat to the Central Valley’s water status quo.

When asked about his commitment to “scientific integrity” in enforcing Interior Department policies, Bernhardt said, “I will look at the science with all its significance and its warts. You look at that, you evaluate it and then you look at the legal decision you can make. In some instances the legal decision may allow you to consider other factors, such as jobs.”

This is music to the ears of many Californian Republicans, starting with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare. He has long contended that the Central Valley has suffered from a “man-made drought” because of bureaucratic decisions that interpret laws in ways that place the interests of  endangered fish such as the delta smelt over the needs of humans – despite no compelling legal obligation to do so.

The Obama administration rejected the contention, saying that its actions to use fresh water supplies to help sustain the delta smelt instead of helping Central Valley farmers followed laws requiring the federal government to protect endangered species and the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Administration representatives said the decisions Nunes slammed as arbitrary were anything but.

Yet the highest-profile fight between Bernhardt’s law firm and Obama’s Interior Department wasn’t about the delta smelt or allegedly dubious bureaucratic maneuvering. It was over toxic substances in the irrigation water coming from Westlands’ 940 square-mile district. Despite criticism from environmentalists, the Obama administration agreed to a settlement on how the problem would be ameliorated that the Fresno Bee estimated could save the water agency more than $375 million. Greens who didn’t like the ruling couldn’t overcome the case that Bernhardt built that federal courts had consistently held that the federal government bore the burden for building drainage systems to limit the impact of the toxins.

Feds control 100 million acres of land in California

But Bernhardt’s confirmation would also insert him in other California water issues.

As a Sacramento Bee editorial noted, the deputy interior secretary historically has been “directly involved in virtually every aspect of California water, from the Colorado River agreement in the south to the Klamath River in the north, and, especially, the operations of the Central Valley Project.”

Given that the federal government owns or effectively controls 100 million acres of land in California – second only to Alaska in federal land holdings in the 50 states – this focus by the agency’s number two official is unsurprising.