34 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY december 7-13, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com hoping nobody sees through the disguise…[Let’s] not solve one problem by creating another.” Whether or not the project can clear that hurdle alone—not “injure” local groundwater users in the eyes of regulators—is unclear, and remains the subject of active litigation. Just over a year ago, the Coastal Commission approved a coastal development permit for Cal Am’s project— with many conditions that must be met prior to construction—but there was a potentially key difference from the CPUC’s approval: the Coastal Commission approved a project that would produce 4.8 million gallons of water per day, whereas the CPUC’s approval four years prior was explicitly for a 6.4 mgd plant. Whether that discrepancy will ultimately matter to the CPUC is not known, but regardless, Cal Am will have to come back to the CPUC for permission on the matter. And in order to get the coastal development permit that would be required to break ground, Cal Am must first produce a laundry list of reports to prove the project won’t harm Marina’s groundwater. There hasn’t been a cost estimate for the desal project since 2017, when Cal Am pegged it at $298.2 million. (Cal Am spokesperson Josh Stratton says the cost estimate will be updated when design work on the first phase of the approved 4.8 mgd plant is finalized.) Since that 2017 estimate, construction costs in the state have ballooned more than 40 percent. If only there were another way. As Cal Am started pursuing its own desal project just over a decade ago, officials from MPWMD and Monterey One Water convened meetings to hash out a project utilizing water from another source: water that’s already been used. It wasn’t the first time the region started recycling water: In the early 1990s, the Carmel Area Wastewater District, Pebble Beach Community Services District and Monterey Peninsula Water Management District entered into an agreement with the Pebble Beach Company to recycle already-treated water from CAWD’s wastewater treatment plant near Carmel River State Beach and use it to irrigate the seven golf courses in Pebble Beach. That project was completed in 1994, and it’s since taken about 800 acre-feet annually from the demand for potable water in Cal Am’s service area—because why use potable water to irrigate grass in an area starved for water? (Dave Stoldt, now MPWMD’s general manager, was an investment banker brought into the mix from the private sector to help broker the finances of that deal. The district reached out to him a few years later to help analyze the finances of a regional desal project.) M1W released a draft environmental impact report in April 2015 describing the proposal for an advanced water recycling program that became known as Pure Water Monterey. (It currently delivers about 3,500 acre-feet of water annually to the local water supply, treating municipal wastewater, stormwater and more.) In a statement at the time of that first draft environmental report, then-M1W general manager Keith Israel said the project could be online as early as fall of 2017. It did not hit that mark—instead the groundbreaking for the first phase was May 5 of 2017, and the project came online in 2020. But the speed with which the project moved forward began to separate it from the parallel track of Cal Am’s desal project, which was more expensive and had a mountain of regulatory hurdles to clear before a shovel hits sand. That separation has only increased since: An expansion of Pure Water Monterey to deliver another 2,250 acre-feet of water annually is already approved and underway, and was finally set in motion when Cal Am decided, after months of delay, to sign a water purchase agreement—necessary to finance the project—this past March. That expansion will cost an estimated $75 million—$42 million of that is being funded through grants—and is expected to be completed just shy of two years from now. When it comes online, the Peninsula’s legal water supply portfolio will total more than 12,000 acre-feet, nearly 3,000 acre-feet more than demand in the last year. Will that be enough to get the region out from under the cease-anddesist order? In theory, yes. In practice, it will come down to whatever the State Water Board decides, and it looks like that will happen next year. When the CPUC approved the expansion of Pure Water Monterey in September 2022, part of the decision called for a supply-and-demand update from the parties to the case—Cal Am, M1W, MPWMD, MCWD and Cal Advocates, the public advocacy arm of the CPUC. Those estimates are scheduled to be filed with the CPUC early next year, as well as responses each party may have to another party’s assessment. Then, the CPUC will take a look at all those assessments and make its own assessment—whether or not there’s an imminent need for a desal project—in a ruling likely to land sometime next summer. Stratton says the company expects to begin construction on the desal plant in late 2025 and be online by the end of 2027. “The [cease-and-desist order] will be lifted when California American Water demonstrates a sustainable and resilient water supply,” he writes, and adds that Pure Water Monterey and aquifer storage and recovery are part of the supply portfolio. Next year, with the Pure Water Monterey expansion about a year away from completion, MPWMD plans to apply to the State Water Board to vacate the cease-and-desist order when it comes online a year later. Stoldt says the hope is that the CPUC will agree with the district’s assessment that foreseeable demand won’t require a new water source on the supply side. That would make the decision easier for the State Water Board, but either way, Stoldt says, the district will make its case. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either ironic, fitting, or both that MPWMD is pursuing a buyout of Cal Am at the same time as it endeavors to lift the cease-and-desist order that for years has hung above the Peninsula’s door like an anvil. For the past three decades, the agency has been fundamental in reviving the Carmel River, and created about 1,300 acre-feet annually of new water with its aquifer storage and recovery project. In the coming days, the district intends to initiate its eminent domain proceedings in Monterey County Superior Court to buy out Cal Am, as directed by voters who passed Measure J in 2018. In the first part of that case a judge will decide whether the buyout meets the threshold for “public necessity.” Outside of the courtroom, as the district makes its case to the CPUC and State Water Board next year, evidence for that necessity will be provided in real time. The State Water Board has given no hints as to their thinking on how much additional water supply will be required in order to lift the cease-anddesist order—the board its a black box. If a desal project is ever built, it would unambiguously remove any doubts about water supply, and it seems certain the agency would lift the order. But the path to construction is laden with obstacles—cost, lawsuits and conditions imposed by the California Coastal Commission. The other path, a recycled water supply that is being advanced by MPWMD and M1W, promises to produce less total water, but it might be enough to persuade the water board to lift the cease-and-desist order. There are fewer hurdles along the way, but the final outcome is unknown. To that end, the Weekly has created a board game, on p. 30, that invites you and a competitor to choose a path—the desal approach or the recycled water approach—to getting the state board to lift the order. It’s not clear how everything will wash out—but you can play the game and see how it goes with the roll of a dice. May the water odds be ever in your favor. Even before the cease- and-desist order, there was a push to start looking toward the sea as a potential water source.
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