June 23, 2010

Chuck Della Sala, Mayor

City of Monterey

Pacific and Madison

Monterey, CA 93940

SUBJECT: REGIONAL WATER PROJECT

Dear Mayor and Members of the City Council:

The League of Women Voter of the Monterey Peninsula has studied water issues during the past three decades. Among many positions, we support the development of a sustainable water supply including reclamation and conservation. We believe that an agency responsible for planning and implementing a water supply project should be directly elected and have boundaries that generally coincide with the Cal-Am service area boundaries.

While we continue to support a regional approach to addressing water supply problems on the Monterey Peninsula, numerous flaws exist in the proposed Regional Project and the implementing Settlement and Financial Agreements. They include uncertainty regarding future water supplies to the Monterey Peninsula, governance, environmental impacts and costs. To address these issues, we support the following:

    1.Use of slant wells in the same location as proposed for the vertical wells.

    2.Co-ownership and operation of the well-field and desalination plant by Cal-Am and a joint-powers agency (JPA) comprised of cities receiving the water and the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District.

    3.Use of a smaller desalination plant resulting from reducing or eliminating the need for producing offsetting water that would otherwise be needed to avoid the export ban.

Use of Slant Wells

Desalinating source water derived using vertical wells into the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin is problematic from a number of perspectives. Because of the prohibition on the export of water from the Basin, meeting the water needs of the Monterey Peninsula may not be possible. As noted in numerous comments on this issue, the ratio of seawater to freshwater is uncertain due to lack of actual water data, and sufficient seawater may not be available to produce 8,800 acre-feet per year.

The use of slant wells has many advantages. Slant wells could be drilled so as to extract water from outside the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin, thus avoiding the export issue.

This would also avoid impacts on the Basin which is in a state of severe overdraft with no long-term solution in place to address continued seawater intrusion. In fact, the much touted Salinas Valley Water Project is over-sold and may not even stop the intrusion, much less turn it back.

Using slant wells was addressed in the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the Coastal Water Project. Because actions by the Marina Coast Water District in certifying the FEIR failed to adopt all feasible mitigation measures for greenhouse gas and construction emissions, using slant wells (North Marina Project) is now the environmentally superior project.

Co-Ownership and Operation

The Regional Project excludes any meaningful representation of the Monterey Peninsula ratepayers. The Regional Project would be owned and operated by the Marina Coast Water District and the County, two agencies that have acknowledged receiving limited if any benefits from the project. A reconstituted Regional Project co-owned by a Monterey Peninsula JPA and Cal-Am would address this issue as well as meet County requirements for public ownership. The JPA should be comprised of one representative each from the cities receiving the water and the MPWMD with weighted voting based on population. Co-ownership would also enhance the ability of the project to receive public funds. While a JPA does not fully address the League's position on governance, it is far superior to project ownership totally outside the MPWMD's boundaries.

Costs

The cost of water for the Regional Project would be some of the most expensive water in the nation, if not the world. There has been no explanation for these excessive costs in comparison to comparable facilities. Because the desalination plant using source water from slant wells would not need to address the export issue by desalinating extra water, the plant could be sized to only meet the needs of the Monterey Peninsula, e.g., 8,800 acre-feet. Additionally, greater use of reclaimed water which has a far lower cost than desalinated water could reduce over-all project costs. The Regional Project described in the DEIR included 300 acre-feet for landscaping on the Monterey Peninsula. This water was excluded from the project description in the FEIR.

Project Delay

The Regional Project is being railroaded through the process based on the argument that any significant changes to the project will unnecessarily delay the project. This seems to be based on a position that there are no delays inherent with the Regional Project. This assumption ignores the following:

    1. Over 90 permits are needed before the project can move forward, including a permit from the California Coastal Commission. Given actions by the Marina Coast Water District to ignore feasible mitigation measures for greenhouse gas emissions, a Coastal Commission permit could be delayed for months.

    2.Obtaining a brine disposal permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board presents numerous challenges.

    3. One lawsuit regarding water rights and CEQA issues is outstanding and has not been resolved. Other litigation regarding the use of water from the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin may be forthcoming.

Project Phasing

If the changes to the Regional Project identified above are not adopted, the proposed project should be completed in phases since there are too many unknowns to act on the full project at this time. Phase 1 should include the following:

    1. A Water Purchase Agreement should not be approved until one year of data from test wells is available.

    2. A court hearing for declaratory relief regarding the export issue and how it should be interpreted should be sought, i.e., if all source water is considered in the formula for export, not just the desalinated water, the project would not be viable.

    3. The Water Purchase Agreement must be amended to assure that ratepayer contributions to the project are fully recognized, i.e., ratepayers get what they pay for.

Given the extraordinary costs of the Regional Project, there are only enough funds to do it once - not enough to do it a second or third time.