SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Federal and state officials touted plans today for building water passages under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, saying it would help both imperiled fish and farmers.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the tunnels would help the fish that are now sucked into pumps drawing water for farms and other water users south of the delta.

Building two tunnels underneath the dilapidated delta that are capable of carrying water at a rate of 9,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) "would essentially negate the killing effect that we have from the large pumps that currently take the water across the delta," Salazar said.

"As broken and outdated as California's water system is, we are also closer than ever to forging a lasting and sustainable solution that strengthens California's water security and restores the health of the delta," he said.

Officials acknowledged there would still be years of controversy ahead. The Interior Department and the state Department of Fish and Game plan to release environmental analyses this fall that will examine a range of alternatives, including conveyances with capacities from 3,000 to 15,000 cfs.

"We're not dealing with perfection," Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said. "We look at Wall Street, we look at the Catholic Church, we look at the Sacramento Bee ... they're not perfect either. ... More intelligent thought is going into this plan than is going into most of those other institutions."

Like the seawater that officials are worried could inundate delta levees in the event of an earthquake, Brown's language turned salty as he vowed to push the plan through.

"At this stage, as I see many of my friends dying ... I want to get shit done," the 74-year-old third-term governor said. "We're going to take into account the opposition, but we're not going to sit here and twiddle our thumbs."

An official from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, which had criticized an earlier water plan for not analyzing the effects on fish in enough detail, voiced support for the new proposal.

"NOAA strongly believes that the successful completion of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan provides the most promising pathway for meeting the coequal goals" of habitat restoration and water supply reliability, NMFS Assistant Administrator Eric Schwaab said. "Completing work on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan will allow us to greatly reduce ... reliance on south Delta diversions, and thereby avoid the very serious problem that the current operating approach has caused for young salmon for many years as well as other native fisheries in the system."

The announcement didn't mollify environmental groups, which are holding a rally here today to call for more species protections.

Sierra Club California released a statement criticizing the plan's lack of detail, including how it will offset any negative environmental impacts.

"It's disappointing in this day and age that we have to continue to discuss whether large, expensive tunnels with no environmental safeguards and many harmful impacts are the right solution for California's water troubles," senior advocate Jim Metropulos said. "We don't need 19th-century solutions to today's problems."

Agricultural interests praised the announcement. "We applaud the leadership of Governor Brown and Secretary Salazar and the hard work of the state and federal agencies that have worked so well in partnership," said Irvine, Calif.-based Western Growers President and CEO Tom Nassif. "The Bay Delta Conservation Plan has reached an important milestone that would have remained elusive without this leadership and focus."