8 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MAY 22-28, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com NEWS At almost 10 years old, the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery has gone from accepting cremated remains only in 2016 to its first-ever in-ground burial in 2021. In another first for the cemetery, officials will be memorializing a World War II prisoner of war whose remains were never found, in a special ceremony at 9:30am Friday, May 23, three days before Memorial Day. The soldier being honored is U.S. Army Maj. Harold Stevenson, believed to have died in 1944 off the coast of Japan. The Department of Defense report about what happened to him reads like a horror story. Stevenson was captured in the Philippines just a few months after Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was shuffled between POW camps until 1944, when he and thousands of other POWs were forced to board what came to be known as “hell ships,” headed for Japan. Many soldiers died while on board due to harsh conditions. The unlabeled ships were bombed by U.S. forces, unknowingly targeting their own soldiers. Stevenson survived an attack on the first hell ship he was on but on the second ship, he succumbed to head injuries suffered during a bombing, according to a fellow officer interviewed after the war. The officer said he buried Stevenson at sea. There are still over 71,000 MIA soldiers from WWII, according to the American Battle Monuments Commission, with most of those being from the War in the Pacific. According to the DoD report, Stevenson’s remains were declared nonrecoverable in 1950, but efforts to find every WWII MIA soldier, including those lost on the hell ships, are ongoing. Never Forget The Veterans Cemetery recognizes its first soldier missing in action and lost during WWII. By Pam Marino For decades, drilling a well in the Salinas Valley and its outlying rural communities has required only one bureaucratic step—applying to the county’s Environmental Health Bureau for a ministerial permit and paying a one-time fee. But with the advent of the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency (SVBGSA) in 2017, that paradigm was no longer sustainable. In the years since forming following California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, SVBGSA has been collecting data and creating reports to send to the state Department of Water Resources to show proof the region is on track to meet SGMA’s requirements to achieve groundwater sustainability by 2040. If the Department of Water Resources doesn’t think a GSA is effectively doing that, it is empowered to step in and take over the process, which is the worst-case scenario for stakeholders who want to retain local control over managing their groundwater. From the outset, SVBGSA teamed up with the Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA), which has been tracking groundwater levels in most of the Salinas Valley since 1995. But one problem that’s since arisen is gaps in the data, areas where there’s been no historic monitoring of groundwater. To help solve that, the Board of Supervisors last October approved MCWRA’s proposal to establish an annual well fee to pay for groundwater monitoring across the basin. Rather than have two different agencies sending bills, MCWRA will send out a single bill to cover the costs of the program for both agencies. How much the proposed annual fee comes out to depends on the subbasin, ranging from $140 to $280. On June 3, MCWRA will come back to the Board of Supervisors to seek approval of the new fee schedule. MCWRA General Manager Ara Azhderian says his agency estimates there are 3,500 wells in the county that would be subject to the fee, but says there could be more—County Health’s records only go back a few decades. “No one wants a new fee, [but] if we don’t do it, the state will,” Azhderian says. “Retaining that local control is a vital part of what we’re trying to accomplish here.” Azhderian says the biggest challenge in instituting the program will likely come from owners of smaller domestic systems; while agricultural growers have been working with MCWRA on groundwater monitoring for years, owners of smaller production wells have not. Registering a well with MCWRA will be required in the new program—a one-time fee of $160 for well owners not already registered—and it will also give key data points to provide the state with what it needs, like where the well is on the property, at what depth and whether it’s still in use. “We’re trying to make the burden on the well owner as light as we can,” Azhderian says, who concedes that it will likely take some time for some well owners to get used to. Piret Harmon, SVBGSA’s general manager, emphasizes the bigger picture: The groundwater basin is overdrafted and seawater intrusion continues, and the data will be critical in evaluating future groundwater sustainability projects. An estimated 3,500 wells in Monterey County would be subject to the fee. Ag wells (like the one in Castroville shown above) already monitor groundwater. Well Funded In an effort to bring Salinas Valley groundwater into sustainability, annual well fees are coming. By David Schmalz For the first time, the California Central Coast Veterans Cemetery (above) is honoring a soldier whose remains were never found, Maj. Harold Stevenson, who died in captivity in WWII. “Retaining local control is a vital part of what we’re trying to accomplish.” DANIEL DREIFUSS DANIEL DREIFUSS
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