Agency Outlines Water Agenda: State Panel Trying for Regional Solution to Peninsula’s Problems

By Kevin Howe, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

Feb. 1–A state utility watchdog agency Wednesday outlined an ambitious agenda for the coming year that will ask local public agencies and private utilities to come up with a regional plan to solve the Peninsula’s water shortage.

Orchestrating a meeting of more than 40 representatives from various water interests with the flair of a motivational seminar speaker, economist Steve Kasower of the University of California-Santa Cruz Urban and Regional Water Research team walked them through a four-point regional collaboration strategy in which the agencies involved would:

–pursue a more beneficial water supply for the region;

–examine regional solutions that may ignore agency boundaries, previous project plans, organizational histories or previous animosities;

–follow the discussion subject scheduled and avoid veering into other issues;

–provide technical staff members for planning analyses or other studies during the collaboration process.

Kasower is serving as a consultant to the state Public Utilities Commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, which called the meeting to determine which water agencies would be on board for a regional approach.

Most of them showed up, including the county Water Resources Agency, California American Water, the Marina Coast Water District, Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, Monterey Peninsula Water Pollution Control Agency, Castroville Water District and representatives from citizen organizations interested in the water issue.

Cal Am received a coastal permit from Monterey County in July and a coastal development permit from the state Coastal Commission in December to operate a pilot desalination plant at Moss Landing out of a 6,500-square-foot facility and use a fraction of the cooling water taken daily from Monterey Bay by the power plant for its operation.

The pilot plant is intended to prove whether seawater conversion is feasible for Cal Am’s Coastal Water Project, which envisions a major desalination plant, pipeline distribution and storage tanks to relieve overpumping in the Carmel River Aquifer, currently the main source of water for the Monterey Peninsula.

Some of the citizen groups have sued the county Board of Supervisors for ignoring its own ordinances requiring public ownership of seawater desalination plants by granting a permit for the pilot desal project. Sand City Mayor David Pendergrass described the lawsuit as “a taint in the process” of the regional agency discussions, with opposing litigants sitting at the same table.

“It’s impossible in water matters,” Kasower said, “to sit people down who are not suing each other.”

Tom Rowley of the Monterey Peninsula Taxpayers Association said any regional project should include public advocate groups.

George Riley of Citizens for Public Water said previous water project decisions by public agencies have collapsed because the public wasn’t included in developing them.

The voters’ rejection of a new Los Padres Dam, Rowley said, wasn’t just a “no growth” vote, but an expression of the reluctance of ratepayers to pay for a Cal Am water project. If they wouldn’t pay $100 million for a dam in 1995, he said, they’re not likely to pay $200 million for a desalination plant now.

Holly Price, acting superintendent of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, said the sanctuary has long advocated a regional approach to solving the area’s water shortage, but expressed disappointment that the Ratepayer Advocates’ proposal doesn’t outline the environmental, along with the economic, benefits of a regional project.

“There should be a regional approach,” she said. “We are faced with a potpourri of permit applications.”

The issue of public vs. private ownership of a proposed desalination plant at Moss Landing was raised by Ron Weitzman of Friends of Locally Owned Water, which has challenged the supervisors’ permit for Cal Am’s pilot project, and plans to oppose a change in the county ownership ordinance that would allow it when it comes before the supervisors March 13.

The Division of Ratepayer Advocates, he said, should join FLOW in opposing the change. Diana Brookes of Ratepayer Advocates said the division does not take sides over local legislation, but sees to it that whatever projects come before it comply with the law.

“We’re not going to decide who builds a desalination plant today,” Kasower said, adding that the issue before the group was not public-private ownership or any particular project. “We’re not asking you how you want to get there,” he said, “but is ‘there’ where you want to get.”

Cal Am vice president and Monterey area operations manager Steve Leonard suggested that those at the meeting peruse the 4,000-page Coastal Water Project report prepared by Cal Am, which he said would answer many of their questions, and that Brooks hold a seminar on how rates are set by the PUC to help answer concerns by citizens’ groups and public ownership advocates.

The Ratepayer Advocates have called a second meeting Feb. 28 to identify water demands and priority projects. Subsequent meetings are planned on the last Wednesday of each month this year to discuss different aspects of water issues, hopefully leading to agreement on a regional water project.

Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.