Matt Weiser reports the Brown administration* is backing away from a giant “Peripheral Tunnel” option for solving California’s bay-delta mess, or at least backing away from the notion that the big tunnel is The Plan:

Gov. Jerry Brown’s top water official revealed Tuesday that a giant tunnel diverting water from the Sacramento River is no longer the leading option to solve the Delta’s chronic water and environmental problems.

Jerry Meral, deputy secretary of the state’s Natural Resources Agency, told an Assembly committee that a range of alternatives will now be considered by the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, an effort to balance water supply and environmental stresses in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta….

Meral did not say the large tunnels would be ruled out for consideration. But he did say the Brown administration will consider much smaller options, including a 3,000 cfs tunnel proposed by environmental groups that never got traction during the Schwarzenegger administration.

* The dude was governor when I was in high school. I just can’t get over that.