While Cal Am’s proposed slant wells in Marina continue to face resistance in the city, not nearly as much attention is being paid to an existential, less ambiguous threat – the potential exhaustion, or contamination, of Marina’s primary water supply: the deep aquifer.
It is on the grounds of water supply concerns that land-use watchdogs Landwatch and Keep Fort Ord Wild submitted letters to Marina Coast Water District in February, arguing that the district’s proposed annexation of parts of the former Fort Ord required an environmental review.
“The additional pumping necessary for the foreseeable growth must be considered now,” Keep Fort Ord Wild attorney Molly Erickson writes, “because the potential cumulative harm is severe… There is no backup water supply if the deep aquifers run out of water.”
On Feb. 20, Marina Coast’s board voted to proceed without an environmental review.
The deep aquifer contains ancient water – thought to be more than 20,000 years old – and is finite water supply that only recharges through leakage from overlying aquifers. And as seawater intrusion continues to advance inland, fouling wells in the 180 – and 400-foot aquifers, there has been an increasing number of wells tapping into the deep.
That puts Marina Coast in a precarious situation: Seawater intrusion continues to encroach on the district’s wells in the 400-foot aquifer, and over the past five years, an increasing percentage of the district’s water is being pumped from the deep. Six years ago, the deep aquifer accounted for about 45 percent of Marina Coast’s pumping; for the past four years that number has held at around 60 percent. In 2017, the district pulled 2,079 acre-feet of water from the deep aquifer, accounting for 64 percent of its pumping.
Marina Coast’s 1998 agreement with the Fort Ord Reuse Authority stipulates that up to 1,400 acre-feet annually of deep-aquifer water can be supplied to Fort Ord. That number is now at about 1,100 acre-feet, and further demand from future projects promises to push it ever higher.
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Regarding David Schmalz’s short article entitled “Hurtling Ahead” in this week’s edition of the Weekly, he has been misled by someone. He wrote that, “On Feb. 20, Marina Coast’s board voted to proceed without an environmental review.” This statement is incorrect. Since at least Feb. 17th, the 124 page final environmental document has been posted at:
http://www.mcwd.org/docs/agenda_minutes/2018-02-20_board/Item%2010-A%20-%20PUBLIC%20FINAL%20IS%20ND%20MCWD%20Fort%20Ord%20Annexation%202018-16-2_FINAL.pdf
In addition, the 226 page draft environmental document was completed last December and was agendized and discussed at the January 22nd Marina Coast board meeting. It is available at:
http://www.mcwd.org/docs/agenda_minutes/2018-01-22_board/Item%209-A%20-%20Attachment%203%20-%20MCWD%20Public%20Draft%20IS%20Dec192017.pdf
The invoices paid by Marina Coast to Denise Duffy and Associates for this environmental analysis are available from Marina Coast upon request. And while the total of 350 pages of environmental review is not a full-blown EIR, it turns out that CEQA actually requires NO environmental review for this annexation application.
Here’s why: this “project” is simply to annex Marina Coast’s existing Ord Community customers into the District’s political boundaries. The District was careful to include within the proposed new boundaries ONLY its current customers and entitled developers. For such annexation requests there is a specific provision in CEQA that entirely exempts from environmental review such requests if they are for a special district and for, “areas containing existing public or private structures developed to the density allowed by the current zoning.” This applies to all the customers we presently serve outside our current political boundaries.
Whether LAFCO approves the annexation or not, Marina Coast will continue to serve its customers in Seaside, Marina, East Garrison, CSUMB and the Ord Military Community. And Marina Coast is not ignorant of the threats to its groundwater. That’s why Marina Coast became a Groundwater Sustainability Agency, why it paid for an aerial electromagnetic survey of the groundwater in the local area and why it so strongly opposes slant wells on the CEMEX property. It is also why Marina Coast has the strongest and oldest water conservation program on the Central Coast, why it has a decommissioned desalination plant and why it’s currently building the pipeline that will bring recycled water to the Ord Community and the Cal Am service area.
Fort Ord will be getting the short end of the stick if potentially toxic recycle water is the so-called potable water that the residential community is promised. There is no medical assurance that advance treatment of heavily polluted water sources like sewage, Blanco legacy pesticides, Ag wash, storm runoff, industrial and medical wastes is safe to drink. It may be labeled "legally safe", but that's meaningless. The EPA has a list of less than 100 pollutants that water utilities need to test for and pass before pumping water to residential homes. The EPA designed the list for traditional water sources like snow caps, lakes and rivers, not sewage and legacy pesticides and industrial wastes which have multiple thousands of chemicals and organisms and pharmaceuticals in them, which the EPA's list does not test for. Recycle water for potable use is a dangerous experiment and long term public health effects may not be known for years to come. Fetuses, young children, the elderly, cancer patients are particularly at risk. Long term exposure to discreet amounts of pollutants pose significant public health risks. Poor Fort Ord residents. You're being sold a false bill of goods by bureaucrats, none of whom have M.D. degrees or licenses to practice medicine, and make no mistake, recycle for potable use represents a medical menace.
and it they are OVER limit, they should stop NOW. Unless the courts continue to treat every water agency like Cal Am - and let them overpump indefinitely, forever and ever.
so when there's a request that hits the 1400 point the permits stop coming. How is this a problem NOW? I don't mean to agree that it's a good idea to use this 'last reserve' water...but it seems a limit has been set, and not yet reached.
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