Salinas Valley Property Owners Settle General Plan Lawsuit Against County

Before the county can hold Salinas Valley property owners to the same standards as other prospective developers in Monterey County, they'll conduct a five-year study on the effectiveness of the Salinas Valley Water Project.

That's according to a settlement agreement announced Aug. 28, about two years after the Salinas Valley Water Coalition, along with taxpayer and agricultural groups, sued the county. The 2010 General Plan requires applicants prove a long-term, sustainable water supply as a condition of getting a development permits—a condition the plaintiffs in the case alleged they'd already met in supporting the water project.

"When the voters approved the Salinas Valley Water Project, one of the things they were promised was that the project would provide an adequate water supply until 2030," says Nancy Isakson, president of the Salinas Valley Water Coalition.

In approving the $33 million project, which included spillway modifications to the Nacimiento and San Antonio reservoirs, as well as the Salinas River Diversion Facility (known as the "Rubber Dam"), Salinas Valley landowners created an assessment area—Zone 2C—to pay for the project.

The project, managed by the county Water Resources Agency, is intended to halt seawater intrusion. The agency already completes maps every two years of groundwater tables and salt levels detected in wells, but the settlement will launch a five-year, comprehensive analysis to determine the effectiveness of the water project.

"It will provide landowners that are paying for the project evidence that it’s working," Isakson says.

The county also agreed to pay the Water Coalition $200,000 to cover attorney's fees.

"This is a fair compromise that results in an effort to determine what’s really going on in Zone 2C," Assistant County Counsel Les Girard says. "We’re go to study the water project’s effectiveness. If it is effective, there’ll be a presumption of long-term water supply in Zone 2C.

"if not, the county’s going to have to take some other steps to address the problem."

The Water Resources Agency discovered severe scour damage to the river bottom last year, and shut down the operations of the Rubber Dam to drain the river and work on repairs.