A little light at the end of a long tunnel is finally shining through, after years of water woes in Monterey. On Tuesday night, an elected board of local leaders voted in favor of the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District to take over California American Water (Cal Am). Six board members voted in favor, with one recusal.
One thing that’s not in dispute is that the City of Monterey needs water. What is in question is where that water comes from. On Aug. 1, the Monterey City Council discussed the possibility of teaming up with the Marina Coast Water District for an agreement that would potentially deliver whatever water the city needs to make proposed housing developments a reality (like on Garden Road, for example, wherein office buildings near the airport would be converted to apartments).
Affordable housing and water – you can’t have one without the other. It’s a stark reality cities on the Monterey Peninsula know well, with the latter always seeming in short supply. But the city of Monterey seems determined to make sure the tap doesn’t run out, for either resource.
In an effort to ease the California housing crisis, the state requires every city and county to develop a certain number of affordable housing units. But in the city of Monterey, they have one big problem— there’s just not enough water.
The Marina Coast Water District (MCWD) announced at a meeting of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors that it is going to restart its long-dormant desalination plant.
Remley Scherzinger, general manager for MCWD, told the supervisors that to augment their current water supply they’ll need to return to their already-built desal plant.
The desal facility was built in 1997 and was operated until 2003.
Key staff from three water organizations along the Monterey Peninsula have apparently reached an agreement on a deal that will send hundreds of acre-feet of new water to California American Water Co. for distribution up and down the Peninsula.
Monterey One Water, the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District and Cal Am reached an agreement at a joint meeting Wednesday whereby Cal Am agreed to purchase water from Monterey One’s Pure Water Monterey expansion project.
Caught between climate change and multi-year droughts, California communities are tapping groundwater and siphoning surface water at unsustainable rates. As this year’s below-average rainfall accentuates the problem, a public-private partnership in the Monterey/Salinas region has created a novel water recycling program that could serve as a model for parched communities
A long-awaited Coastal Commission hearing on California American Water’s proposed Monterey Peninsula desalination project is shaping up to be an all-day affair.
After nine months of waiting, the desal project is set for a special remote commission meeting on Thursday in which the proposal is the lone item on the agenda.
Expansion of the Pure Water Monterey recycled water project is the best option for the Monterey region to meet its future water supply needs. Unfortunately, California American Water Co., a private water supplier, is discrediting the project in the hopes of instead getting approval for their much more costly, oversized and environmentally harmful groundwater desalination project to be built in, around and through the city of Marina.
Pure Water Monterey is finally poised to make water available for the Monterey Peninsula, providing a new water supply source for the area while allowing a reduction in Carmel River water usage albeit at a considerably reduced rate to start than was expected.
Last weekend, Monterey One Water announced that it had completed a 1,000-acre-foot recycled water reserve in the Seaside basin and that California American Water could start extracting additional water from the basin equivalent to the amount of recycled water being pumped into the basin beyond the reserve.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
