Cal Am lightens the terms of its own proposal to extend the state's Carmel River cutback order.

California American Water officials have admitted they're not going to hit the state’s January 2017 deadline to cut back 70 percent of its pumping from the Carmel River. A replacement water supply is at least two and a half years behind target, and that's optimistic.

For the past year, Cal Am, Monterey Peninsula Regional Water Authority and Monterey Peninsula Water Management District have been asking the State Water Resources Control Board to extend the river cutback deadline of Dec. 31, 2016, which the state imposed in a 2009 cease-and-desist order (CDO).

The Peninsula groups submitted CDO modification proposals in April 2014, December 2014 and January 2015. Each of the three drafts has been progressively tougher on Cal Am than the last, in hopes the state water board will see enough concessions to sign off on what amounts to yet another stall in 20 years of illegal river overdraft.

This morning, in the March 12 MPRWA agenda packet, Cal Am released a fourth modification proposal. But instead of cranking up the pressure to get off the river—as Carmel Mayor Jason Burnett put it in January, “We’re going to be on a shorter leash”—this fourth draft, dated March 10, gives Cal Am more flexibility when it misses its milestones.

“We don’t want to lock ourselves into something and then all of a sudden there’s a demand for water and we find ourselves going into rationing,” says MPRWA Executive Director Jim Cullem. “We all agree this is not Cal Am’s fault, and it’s the burden of the state to prove otherwise.”