Sara Rubin here, thinking back to a pep talk that I heard Piret Harmon deliver on Dec. 18 of last year. She was addressing the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency’s advisory committee, a group that convened for the first time on that date, with their charge: “We are a collaborator, a convenor,” she said. “You are thinking about what’s best for this agency and for the whole valley.”
In the world of Salinas Valley water, that is no small task.
As staff writer Katie Rodriguez has reported, there are different ways to think about the hydrological benefits and the economic benefits and how they are spread out—some areas (mostly near the coast, where seawater intrusion threatens groundwater) are in peril. Other areas (in the southern Salinas Valley) are in a better position to continue pumping as they please with less immediate consequence.
Harmon’s plea has been to think more regionally, and to advance technical water supply solutions that help everyone everywhere avoid reductions in pumping (known euphemistically in the water world as “demand management”).
With deadlines looming, now is the time to get to some of those technical solutions. (You can read more detail about the project concepts in Rodriguez’s news story this week.)
The advisory committee meets tomorrow, July 16 at 1pm to review these concepts. The pressure is on to move something forward that could be built and meet state mandates for groundwater sustainability.
But part of feasibility is not just hydrological analysis—it’s cost. And of course the proposals that are most likely to comply with state requirements are the most technically involved and the most costly. Portfolios 1 and 3A include a desalination component (called a brackish groundwater restoration project), most likely to make the biggest impact.
But Portfolios 1 and 3A are expensive, with a $1.3 billion capital cost followed by $117 million in annual operating costs for the former, larger option, or $1 billion up front with $74 million annually for 3A. Those are big numbers.
“We are fairly confident that these portfolios would work, but they are something new for this valley, and you're talking about putting in a lot of money for something that you have not tried before. That is one of the biggest concerns,” Derrik Williams, a hydrological consultant to SVBGSA, told Rodriguez.
"The technical concerns leverage off the cost. I think if this was an inexpensive project and people were uncertain about the technology, they'd say it's OK, it's worth trying. They don't want to commit a big cost to something that they aren't absolutely sure is going to work.”
Of course, for the technical solutions to work, they need to be built, and to be built, they need to be paid for. It’s property owners who need to agree to pay for them (through California’s Prop. 218 rate-approval process).
“These costs are unaffordable, even if the entire valley is assessed,” Chris Bunn, president of the Salinas Basin Water Alliance, wrote in a letter to the SVBGSA board. “Even if a project successfully models on paper, is it a viable option if it is unaffordable?”
Whether property owners agree remains an open question.