Harbor District slams county planners for draft Moss Landing Community Plan.

Just before midnight six weeks ago, as Nader Agha tells it, he was driving down I-405 when another driver, going 90 miles per hour without headlights, slammed into his Mercedes s550. Somehow, theMonterey County business mogul’s injuries were relatively minor. “God saved my life, and my car helped,” Agha says.

The crash happened right around the time Monterey County planners presented the draft Moss Landing Community Master Plan, part of the North County Land Use Plan update.

Agha’s taking an optimistic look at what amounts to a messy collision – this time, with his proposal to build a massive desalination plant, dubbed The People’s Project, at his Moss Landing Commercial Park.

The draft community plan doesn’t mention The People’s Project, but proposes policies some say could cripple it.

Late last month, the Moss Landing Harbor District board issued a fierce smackdown of the July 2014 draft.

“The board and I are extremely disappointed and concerned with the lack of communication from the county in recent years,” Moss Landing Harbormaster Linda McIntyre writes in an Aug. 29 letter to county planners.

McIntyre alleges the draft plan contains factual mistakes, unsupported conclusions, legal omissions, non-compliant policies and outdated information. Her letter requests 43 corrections.

For example, she writes, the draft plan fails to reference a 1993 multi-agency agreement that “grandfathers in” an existing seawater intake and outfall on Harbor District property – an old pipeline now owned by Agha’s company.

The plan also fails to acknowledge a 2002 report from the California Public Utilities Commission identifying that pipeline, and Agha’s commercial park, “as the optimal location for a regional desalination facility,” she writes.

Agha’s attorney, David Balch of Salinas firm Moncrief & Hart, has also asked planners to factor The People’s Project into the community plan, as they did for competing Moss Landing proposal DeepWater Desal.

But DeepWater might not even want that mention. Grant Gordon, the company’s chief operating officer, says the DeepWater Desal site lies just outside the community plan’s boundaries. “We’re completely nonexistent within that plan,” he says.

McIntyre says the Harbor District board is not picking sides. “The Harbor District has to be neutral and be prepared to issue permits to either one of those entities,” she says. “That is why we need to have The People’s Project at least acknowledged in this plan.”

But the Harbor District board is in discussions with Agha’s team about becoming the lead agency, and possibly a stakeholder, of The People’s Project, she adds. The board is scheduled to consider a draft agreement Sept. 24, and Agha is covering the district’s costs in pursuing the proposal.

County planners Jacqueline Onciano and Martin Carver say they’re taking a close look at the Harbor District’s objections and will respond during a Sept. 24 meeting with a district subcommittee.

“We want to work with the community,” Onciano says.

Agha’s not worried. “DeepWater Desal is nothing but the hogwash, phony baloney,” he says. “We will be the only one who will be building the desal. There’s no question about it.”