Desalination can now be owned and operated by private entities in Monterey County.

With an extreme drought tightening its grip, drawing concerns about the future of water in Monterey County and throughout California, the county’s Board of Supervisors overturned a 33-year-old law to allow the private ownership and operation of desalination facilities within the county.

Previously, desalination facilities were limited to public ownership, a rule that was criticized as more of a political decision than anything else.

The decision to overturn the law and allow private ownership and operation passed 4-1 on June 21, with Supervisor Wendy Root Askew dissenting. She said she felt this vote was aimed at a specific project and she could not approve county staff’s determination that the rule change would not have a significant environmental impact.

The project Root Askew alluded to was the regional brackish desalination plant proposed by Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp., an $11 billion publicly traded and Canada-based company who shopped the project around in public meetings during the summer of 2021. The project was proposed to be massive – producing 32,000 acre-feet of drinking water per year when built out. (For context, California American Water’s embattled desal plant would pump out 6,200 acre-feet per year.) Algonquin teased the project to the public and local officials with the caveat that the company couldn’t do anything until the desalination ordinance was overturned.

Supervisor Mary Adams said the law change would impact the macro as well as the micro: property owners whose wells have been infiltrated by seawater intrusion from overpumping will now be able to set up small-scale desalination operations.