22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 25-JULY 1, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com It’s a critical year to pick a solution to save Monterey County’s aquifers. The questions are how, and who pays? By Katie Rodriguez WATER WORKSIf nothing is done, a portion of northern Monterey County could lose access to aquifers that underlie a significant chunk—call it 25 percent—of the county’s agricultural production, and supply drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents, 50,000 of whom are disadvantaged. The sea wants to move inland, a fact that’s been known in the region for over 80 years as agricultural production increased. But over time, groundwater was pumped faster than could be replenished, exacerbating the inland march of salty water beneath Castroville toward Salinas. Eventually, the state said that something needed to be done about it. How to stop the ocean from spreading and further contaminating these freshwater aquifers—specifically, what’s known as the 180/400 Subbasin—has become one of the region’s defining environmental and political questions. Thanks to California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, passed just over a decade ago, local water agencies need to decide on a plan to protect future water supply. In 2015, that countdown began. Monterey County, along with other regions in California with critically overdrafted groundwater basins, began a decades-long effort to bring groundwater use into balance by 2040. Now, 2026 marks a pivotal year. All of the groundwater modeling, the public meetings, the basin boundary decisions and feasibility studies of the last 10 years culminate in this moment, where local agencies must push plans across the line into implementation. As projects have begun to emerge, their costs, impacts and feasibility have been heavily scrutinized and The subbasins that make up the Salinas Valley were mapped to reflect how groundwater moves underground as it travels from the southern parts of the county and northward alongside the Salinas River (above, overlooking West Blanco Road), before emptying out into the Pacific Ocean. Photos by Daniel Dreifuss
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