Grumpy judge rejects Marina Coast move to stop Cal Am's desal test well.

Judge Paul Marigonda does not seem to be having a good day.

The Santa Cruz County Superior Court judge opened today's hearing by telling the assembled lawyers in black suits that he was really busy. He wanted to know why this case was transferred to his court—the case being Marina Coast Water District's lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission. 

After shutting down a reporter's request to cover the ex parte hearing—"This is going to take me an extraordinary amount of time today," he said, eyeing the boxes of documents one lawyer was assembling—Marigonda held the proceeding behind locked courtroom doors.

Ultimately, he rejected Marina Coast's request for a temporary restraining order. The TRO, if granted, would have forced California American Water to stop construction on its desalination test well in north Marina.

A quick review of the legal volleys that brought us here: Cal Am needs the test well to draw in seawater for a proposed desalination plant—the centerpiece of a larger proposal to stop over-pumping the Carmel River and find a replacement water supply for the Monterey Peninsula.

Cal Am plans to use slant wells for its seawater intake, drawing salty ocean water through a natural sand filter like a straw angled toward the sea, to keep sea life from getting sucked in. But first, it needs to prove the slant wells will draw only ocean water, and not Salinas Basin groundwater already claimed by farmers and others.

Marina Coast Water District, which is suing Cal Am and the county for sticking it with an $18 million loss on the failed Regional Desalination Project (the current project's predecessor), initially rejected the permit for Cal Am's test well at the Cemex property in north Marina, arguing the well could take water needed by Marina Coast's own customers.

Cal Am appealed to the Marina City Council, which likewise rejected the test well permit. So Cal Am appealed to the California Coastal Commission, which approved the test well. Cal Am broke ground stat.

Marina Coast (and, in a consolidated lawsuit, Ag Land Trust) promptly sued the Coastal Commission over that decision. The case was transferred from Monterey County Superior Court to Santa Cruz County. Today, Judge Marigonda considered Marina Coast's motion to make Cal Am halt its test well construction.

According to Cal Am spokeswoman Catherine Stedman, Marigonda said both sides have a good chance of prevailing on the case's merits, but the Coastal Commission did a better job of showing there would be no immediate harm to allowing the test well construction to continue.

A preliminary injunction hearing, when Marigonda will consider stopping the test well for good, is scheduled for April 21—giving Cal Am at least enough time to finish drilling its test well and get some data. Stedman says the test well should be complete by Feb. 28, and pumping begins March 1.

(That's when they'd have to stop construction anyway, because of the start of nesting season for the threatened snowy plover.)

Marina Coast attorneys didn't want Cal Am to begin pumping before that April hearing, Stedman adds. But the judge said they'd have to request another ex parte hearing—where he can lock the courtroom doors—if they had evidence Cal Am wasn't following its plan.