Faced with declining production, Sand City looks to revamp its desalination plant.

As the race heats up among the contending desalination proposals that would serve the Monterey Peninsula, the region’s sole operational desal plant, in Sand City, is set for a revamp.

The desal plant, which is owned by Sand City and operated by California American Water, was approved by the California Coastal Commission in 2005 and came online in 2010.

Yet nearly every year since, the plant – which is designed to have a peak production capacity of 300 acre-feet annually – has seen its production decline, and the 2015-16 water year was its least productive yet, when it yielded just 156 acre-feet.

Unlike Cal Am’s proposed desal plant in Marina, which would utilize a series of slant wells that pump salty groundwater from the tidal zone, the plant in Sand City uses four vertical wells near the beach that target water with a considerably lower salt content. Whereas Cal Am’s proposed Marina wells aim to pump water that is at least 95-percent saltwater, the Sand City plant targets water in a range between about 50 – to 70-percent saltwater, or brackish water.

The problem has been the drought: As less fresh water percolates into the sand from rainfall, the groundwater has become increasingly salty. And because the operation is only permitted to discharge brine – what’s left after desalination – that has the same salinity as seawater, that has meant less potable water production.

To combat the problem, Sand City and Cal Am have explored two options: getting amendments to their discharge permit from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, and drilling new wells further inland.

After learning that a new discharge permit would require amending the project’s environmental impact report, Sand City officials are moving forward with the latter.

The plan, which is scheduled to come before the California Coastal Commission for approval Feb. 8, would amend Sand City’s permit to allow for the construction of six news wells on its beach, three of which would be constructed this year. City Administrator Todd Bodem says that only six wells total – out of seven – are expected to operate at any single time, which would allow one well to be non-operational if its source water becomes too saline.

The city and Cal Am split the cost of about $50,000 for a hydrologic study to get the amended permit, which Bodem is hopeful will be approved. And as for the cost of constructing the new wells – City Engineer Leon Gomez estimates each will cost between $90,000-$130,000 – Bodem believes it is an expense that should be assumed by Cal Am.

“They might feel differently,” he says, “but we all can agree this is something that needs to get done.”