Cal Am and county water agency file suit against Marina Coast. Again.

In Monterey County water politics, grudges can run even deeper than aquifers.

The long-running feud between Marina Coast Water District (on one side) and California-American Water and Monterey County Water Resources Agency (on the other) has taken another legal turn. Today in San Francisco County Superior Court, Cal Am and MCWRA filed a new lawsuit against Marina Coast and environmental engineering firm RMC Water and Environment. 

The plaintiffs are seeking more than $10 million in damages for what the complaint describes as Marina Coast's "representations, misrepresentations, failures to disclose and suppression of information" leading to the collapse of the Regional Desalination Project (RDP).

A quick recap of how that fell apart: Back in 2010, Steve Collins, then an MCWRA board member, began working for RMC, a Marina Coast subcontractor. He was eventually charged with, and in March 2014 convicted of, a felony conflict of interest.

The Regional Desalination Project fell apart, and in April of this year, a San Francisco Superior Court judge declared void four of the five agreements that had held the RDP together. The only one that remained valid: an agreement under which Cal Am created a revolving line of credit Marina Coast and MCWRA could draw from to pay for RDP-related expenses.

Marina Coast borrowed from that credit line, the lawsuit alleges, but never paid that money back. Cal Am and MCWRA are now asking for Marina Coast to pony up more than $10 million, plus punitive damages, attorneys' fees and other penalties.

“It’s [Marina Coast and RMC's] actions that caused the failure of the [RDP] contracts," MCWRA Attorney Charles McKee says. “This lawsuit is saying that they caused the failure of the project, and therefore both RMC and Marina Coast owe Cal Am and the MCWRA damages.”

Cal Am spokesman Kevin Tilden says the RDP expenses were kept in a separate account and haven't been passed on to customers yet, so winning this lawsuit wouldn't result in reimbursements to Cal Am customers. 

Today's lawsuit could further hobble Marina Coast's finances, which are already reeling from the RDP's collapse. In March, a judge ruled Marina Coast could not recoup any of the estimated $18 million the district claims it spent on the now-bunk desal project.

Meanwhile, Cal Am is now pursuing a new seawater desalination project, the Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project. Marina Coast is not a partner on it, and has repeatedly attempted to thwart its progress.