Despite obstacles, Monterey and Del Rey Oaks plan to use Fort Ord land for housing.

If a housing plan exists on paper, it doesn’t mean it will put a single roof over someone’s head, unless, perhaps, a visionary architect took all the paper that cities have generated for their state-required housing plans – which are intended to be updated every eight years, this year being one of them – and built a home out of paper maché.

But then one would have to worry about water. And likewise, just because a water right exists on paper, it doesn’t mean the actual water exists.

And perhaps nowhere is the nexus of these two regional challenges – the lack of adequate housing and water supplies – more acutely evident than in the draft housing elements for the cities of Monterey and Del Rey Oaks, plans that both include building housing in open space, filled with flora (some species of which are federally protected), in the former Fort Ord.

In the 30 years since the former Army base closed, the gauntlet of regulatory hurdles and resource constraints have made developing the land increasingly difficult, and expensive.

But the housing plans are required by the state Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD), which also dictates to cities and counties how many units they must zone for residential use that could theoretically be built before the next housing plan update in 2031. Those requirements are called Regional Housing Needs Allocation, a portion of which must include units zoned for low – and very-low income residents, which adds another constraint – no developer is going to build, or even try, unless there’s a possibility for profit, and no nonprofit is going to develop housing unless it believes it can at least break even.

Nonetheless, Del Rey Oaks’ draft housing element has identified 312 residential units on its former Fort Ord land, while Monterey has identified 2,089 units. Neither city’s land on the former Army base is currently zoned for residential – Del Rey Oaks’ 310 acres are zoned for commercial use with a visitor overlay (i.e., hotels), while Monterey’s 130 acres are zoned for light industrial use.

Rezoning those lands is doable, but hurdles make both city’s housing plans on the former Fort Ord start to look like nothing more than a mirage.

Primary among the constraints is water, and with respect to former Fort Ord land, the designated water utility is the Marina Coast Water District, which currently depends entirely on groundwater to serve residences in its service area. That groundwater is pumped from three sources: the 180-, 400 – and 900-foot aquifers, named for their depths.

Due to seawater intrusion created by decades of agricultural over-pumping near the coast, Marina’s 180/400-foot aquifers comprise one of 21 water basins statewide that the state has deemed “critically overdrafted.” Meanwhile, more than half of MCWD’s residential supply currently comes from the 900-foot aquifer, aka the “deep aquifer,” an ancient, finite water source of unknown quantity that only recharges through leakage from overlying aquifers.

And as seawater intrusion has compromised the overlying aquifers near the coast, growers, over the last decade, have increasingly been tapping the deep aquifer – county data shows that in 2013, less than 1,000 acre-feet of water from the deep aquifer was used for agriculture; by 2021, that number shot up to above 8,000 acre-feet annually. (Marina Coast’s total groundwater production, which includes all its aquifers, is about 3,300 acre-feet annually.)

There is also a cap, first established by the now-defunct Fort Ord Reuse Authority and which remains in effect through a legal settlement between MCWD and activist group Keep Fort Ord Wild and nonprofit Landwatch, on how many new units on the former Fort Ord can be served by groundwater. Per the final environmental impact report for Seaside’s Campus Town development, the completion of that project would bring the total of such units to 6,150, meaning there would only be 10 remaining under the cap.

So how could Del Rey Oaks or Monterey possibly have water for housing on Fort Ord land? Rem Scherzinger, MCWD’s general manager, says there remain just under 2,900 units still available under the cap. Scherzinger says that determination is made by counting how many water meters have been set. In other words, regardless of whether a project has been approved and millions of dollars have been spent on planning it, a developer would have no promise of a water supply if another developer – perhaps building a smaller project, say – were able to get a request for meters in first. It’s first-come, first-serve, Scherzinger says. But what developer would invest in a project without knowing if it would ultimately have water?

Not to mention, neither Del Rey Oaks’ nor Monterey’s Fort Ord lands are within MCWD’s service area – they would have to be annexed into the district’s boundaries – but Scherzinger says Marina Coast can send water outside the district if it’s “surplus” water, which he defines as having more water in the system than there is demand.

On Sept. 19, Seaside City Attorney Sheri Damon sent a letter to Marina Coast, opposing the transfer of water outside the district “until MCWD is able to fulfill its obligations to serve all properties within its existing service area. This letter further will serve as notice that Seaside intends to protect its rights,” it reads, like a drop of blood in the water.