Mayors’ group releases more documents on bid to relax Carmel River cutback order.

Picking at a plate of avocado and poached egg over spinach, Carmel-by-the-Sea Mayor Jason Burnett scrolled through his email inbox. Burnett, a director on the Monterey Peninsula Regional Water Authority (MPRWA), had decided to give the Weekly access to certain emails that the state refused to hand over.

The State Water Resources Control Board ordered California American Water to cut off half the area’s current water supply in January 2017. Cal Am officials now acknowledge they are more than two years behind that deadline for getting the Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project, anchored by a seawater desalination plant, online.

In Public Record Act requests submitted to the state water board in late November, then to MPRWA and Monterey Peninsula Water Management District in early February, this newspaper sought documents answering: Who is talking with whom about a potential reprieve? And what’s on the table?

The state water board claims the responsive documents are exempt from disclosure because they were created for use in ongoing litigation.

The case in question dates back to 2009, when the state water board issued the cutback order. Cal Am’s Carmel River overdraft violates protections for native steelhead trout, which were listed as federally threatened in 1997.

Four Peninsula cities, Cal Am and others challenged the order in court. A 2012 settlement included a “tolling agreement” allowing the plaintiffs to re-activate the suit by July 2016.

That potential re-activation, according to state water board spokesman Tim Moran, is why his agency is withholding the requested documents. The Weekly disagrees and has forwarded the issue to an attorney with the nonprofit Californians Aware, who will be following up with the state this week.

MPRWA, which was formed in 2012, is not party to the 2009 lawsuit. Burnett says that’s why he’s opened his MacBook Air over breakfast at Carmel Belle.

What the emails reveal: Cal Am’s attorney made a proposal in April 2014 to extend the cutback order by two years. State water board officials didn’t respond until November, Burnett says, when they essentially said the “inadequate” proposal wasn’t worth discussing.

Cal Am attorney Andrew Homer tried again Dec. 2 with a new proposal, this one extending the state’s cutback deadline to 2020 and offering to reduce river pumping by 500 acre-feet per year.

Water board officials, Burnett says, were unimpressed. “We saw this was going sideways,” he says, “and I volunteered to go up [to Sacramento].”

On Dec. 18, Burnett met with Board Chair Felicia Marcus. “We have been working to understand what they need and modify our thinking in response,” he says. Marcus declined to comment.

On Jan. 14, Cal Am floated a third proposal to relax the river cutback order, as the Weekly first reported Feb. 10. This one includes a four-year extension, annual pumping reductions of 1,000 acre-feet and specific progress milestones along the way.

Moran says the proposal hasn’t been formally submitted to the state water board, and board members can’t comment on issues likely to come before them. “Our interest,” he writes by email, “is to get the illegal diversions from the river stopped as soon as possible.”