County water agency fields many complaints about doing too little – and too much.

For a time, Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, was fuming about the Monterey County Water Resources Agency. Alejo authored AB 155 last year, authorizing the agency to issue a design-build contract for a major water storage project, a proposed underground tunnel connecting lakes Nacimiento and San Antonio.

It was a project positioned to be one of the first in the state to apply for funding from the state water bond, a $7.5 billion measure approved by voters Nov. 4.

The only hitch: To qualify for state bond money (or drought relief funding), an applicant needs to comply with the voluntary California Statewide Groundwater Elevation Monitoring (CASGEM) program, launched in 2009.

The Water Resources Agency doesn’t monitor groundwater to CASGEM’s standards, so it’s out of luck.

A 2014 list by the California Department of Water Resources identifies 515 groundwater basins in the state. Of those, the overdrafted Salinas Valley East Side Aquifer is the number-one priority for groundwater monitoring.

Alejo called Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas and told him, effectively, to get it together. “If Monterey County doesn’t come into compliance, they are going to miss out on millions,” Alejo says. “They aren’t doing an adequate job of advocating for multiple sources of funding.”

Partly to remedy that disapproving voice from the capitol, Simon Salinas called for the creation of a new ad hoc committee on water issues in January, intending to lobby state regulators.

The group has met only once, Feb. 5, in a closed meeting to which the Weekly was refused entry. In attendance were Supervisors Salinas and Dave Potter, as well as three members of the Water Resources Agency board.

The group released a sprawling action plan, indicating intentions to work on various Salinas Valley groundwater-related projects, including the interlake tunnel and Salinas River water rights.

Salinas city officials are concerned the Water Resources Agency has overstepped its bounds when it comes to another water frontier: creating a new groundwater sustainability agency.

Last year, the state Legislature passed a suite of historic laws setting the stage for regulating groundwater pumping for the first time in California history. (Unlike rivers and other surface waters, which are carefully monitored, groundwater is regulated by a so-called “pump as you please” allowance.)

The new laws require each groundwater basin to be overseen by a new groundwater sustainability agency (GSA). These new oversight entities must be created by June 30, 2017.

The Water Resources Agency has held three public meetings on the process of creating a local GSA for the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin. Several Salinas city officials worried the Water Resources Agency was positioning itself to double as the GSA.

Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter sent a letter to the Water Resources Agency board Feb. 3, asking them to slow down.

The city won’t settle for anything less than a seat – and a vote – on the GSA, Gunter writes: “We do not believe any single agency currently exists that is capable of developing the trust and cooperation that will be required if the requirements of [state law] are to be met.”