26 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JUNE 25-JULY 1, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com it’s useless because nobody’s irrigating. We need the water during the growing season.” Only one project alone solves the issue of seawater intrusion in the 180/400-foot aquifers, the biggest, most ambitious and controversial project known as the brackish groundwater restoration project. The concept involves a hybrid approach: constructing extraction wells along the coast to intercept seawater intrusion, treating that water with reverse osmosis, then reinjecting it back into the aquifer to add enough pressure to stop seawater intrusion. It is the only project projected to both stop and reverse seawater intrusion while protecting multiple subbasins. Because it does not rely on rainfall, it is also considered drought resilient. It would improve groundwater quality and protect additional subbasins, including the Eastside, from future seawater intrusion. Yet the cost is the highest: roughly $951 million in capital costs and another $113 million annually in operating costs. “They’re all expensive,” Harmon said at the meeting. “There is no really easy, low-hanging, non-expensive solution. All of them are portfolios. But they are distinctly different in terms of who’s receiving benefits from each project.” And that is not necessarily a question of hydrology, but one of culture, geography and politics. Driving from Castroville, through Salinas to Gonzales, Greenfield and King City, the road is flanked by acres upon acres of leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables and strawberries, crops that help make Monterey County the fourth-highest agricultural-producing county in California. In 2024, the county generated $5 billion in gross agricultural value. Strawberries alone surpassed $1 billion in value that year, the first crop to reach that threshold in the county’s history. Despite those numbers, many farmers face mounting and in some cases, crippling, financial pressure. Consolidation in the specialty crop market regionally has pushed out smaller growers unable to keep up with climbing regulatory prices and agricultural input costs. “The incremental add-on of regulatory burden over the years is one of the main reasons why farming has changed so much in the valley over the last 30 years,” says Bunn, whose family used to farm thousands of acres in the area before scaling back in the 1990s following record-breaking floods, and later, after the first E. coli outbreak. “That started to greatly change the economics of farming, so we sort of saw the writing on the wall at that point, because we’re not that big.” An estimated 95 percent of water used in Monterey County is pumped from groundwater aquifers to support over 200,000 acres of land in cultivation in the Salinas Valley. Those aquifers, in effect, also help feed much of the country. Monterey County produces 28 percent of U.S. strawberries—nearly one out of every four eaten nationwide. The numbers climb even higher for other crops: 48 percent of the nation’s broccoli, 57 percent of its celery and 61 percent of its leaf lettuce. “Unfortunately, because agriculture is responsible for 90 percent of the extractions every year, I think the overall presiding presumption is that we will pay 90 percent of the project,” Groot says. The stakes for Castroville and Salinas, as well as the indirect costs to the rest of the County, are high. Households on domestic wells would continue to lose access to drinking water, and pumping restrictions would lead to fallowing, with large portions of farmland taken out of production, risking disruption of the broader agricultural economy. “If you have a lower capital cost project portfolio, yes, that saves some money, but we need to look at how that weighs against costs that are being imposed on folks. That’s the trade-off,” said Duncan MacEwan, an economist with ERA Economics working with the SVBGSA, during an advisory committee meeting on June 18. “There’s no free lunch.” The portfolio of projects would mix and match brackish water desalination, NSIP, demand management and others, although the ultimate scale is yet to be determined, as has the funding strategy, leaving many still uneasy. Experts have discussed pursuing outside funding from a mix of federal grants through the Bureau of Reclamation, or state bond funds through Proposition 4 for water-related infrastructure programs. DWR programs, such as the multibenefit land repurposing program, could also provide additional funding, which provides grants to convert agricultural land to less water-intensive uses. However, grant funding alone is unlikely to cover the costs of implementation and local funding mechanisms would be required. Fees or assessments on water users, along with cost recovery from private beneficiaries could be imposed, depending on how the projects are ultimately owned, financed and operated. All of this remains an unknown. In the southern Salinas Valley, where water availability appears more stable and well beyond the reach of seawater intrusion, many growers argue they have become more efficient with irrigation. As a result, some question why they should bear the cost of solving a problem concentrated farther north. These areas are also located closer to reservoir releases and groundwater recharge flows. And while they are still considered at risk of overdraft, they are nowhere near facing the overdraft in subbasins near the coast. Some projects reach into the billions to build, a financial burden impossible for the northern Salinas Valley to tackle alone. Whether seawater intrusion is a valley-wide problem or just an issue for the northern Salinas Valley to solve is “the biggest bone of contention,” says Bunn, whose family historically has farmed in the lower Salinas Valley in areas prone to seawater intrusion. John Farrow, an attorney with the watchdog group Landwatch, argues that the economic case to support the biggest project, the brackish groundwater restoration project, relies on a worst-case scenario that may never happen. It’s an argument echoed by Tom Virsik, an attorney representing growers in the southern Salinas Valley. “The project’s economic justification depends critically on the Valleywide uniform cut assumption, which inflates the benefit by including large losses to inland subbasins,” Farrow wrote in a letter to the SVBGSA Board of Directors and advisory committee. “It is no secret that stakeholders fundamentally disagree whether there is any hydrological or legal rationale for compelling southern subbasins to assume responsibility to mitigate seawater intrusion. If there is no such responsibility, then it may be unreasonable to assume the [state] would order cuts to these subbasins.” The variations in the Salinas Valley that matter to state decisionmakers may not be political or cultural, but hydrological—and it may not be viewed as one basin. Whatever the local SVBGSA board chooses, it is just a start. “We have a long road ahead of us,” Harmon says. “Any project that is included in the preferred portfolio will go into initial design, CEQA, permitting, funding. Any of these steps could daylight fatal flaws and may require further refinement, modification or abandonment of a project.” Church is looking at issues of both water supply and economic sustainability for the region. “The rippling effect is so big,” he says. “If you move that money out of there, it lowers the income base in the whole area.” In the question of who benefits and who pays, the answer will be baked somewhere within the suite of projects the SVBGSA is set to recommend in August for consideration by the state. While the path ahead is complex, the reality may be more simple: Something’s got to change. Supervisor Glenn Church is also a board member for the SVBGSA, and will be among those recommending a portfolio of projects to the state in August. Much of his district is in the area most vulnerable to groundwater impacts, as the 180/400-foot subbasin underlies Castroville and the northern Salinas Valley.
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