Rain offers hope the Peninsula can avoid water rationing, if it persists.

Even though it might be raining as you’re reading this, the prospect of water rationing for Cal Am ratepayers remains very much on the table. But before that were to happen, Cal Am ratepayer bills will likely spike even higher.

Presently, there are about 2,600 acre-feet of water in storage to serve the Monterey Peninsula – 1,400 from the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District’s aquifer storage and recovery project, in which excess Carmel River flows are pumped over the hill and injected into the Seaside Basin for storage, and another 1,200 Monterey One Water put into storage from its Pure Water Monterey recycled water project.

The Peninsula’s annual water demand is just under 10,000 acre-feet, but the total supply in Cal Am’s portfolio is about 1,000 to 1,200 short of that. That is because on Dec. 31 last year, a 1995 cease-and-desist order finally took effect, forcing Cal Am to reduce pumping of the Carmel River to the legal limit of the company’s water right – 3,376 acre-feet annually.

That means until a new water supply comes online, the reserves will continue to be tapped.

And if those reserves are tapped out in the next two to three years, two things could potentially happen: The first is that Cal Am moves into “Stage 3” of its Water Shortage Contingency Plan, in which rates would go up by 25 percent for six months. If that doesn’t succeed in closing the supply-demand gap, rates would go up 40 percent for another six months. If that doesn’t work, then the state water board would impose rationing.

The second possibility is that the water board orders rationing before Stage 3, once reserves are tapped out.

Rainfall can help limit the impact on reserves in two ways: One is there is less water demand for irrigation, and the other is Cal Am can use what is called a “Table 13” water right when the Carmel River is exceeding a flow threshold. That allows Cal Am to divert up to 1,488 acre-feet annually from December through May, but its delivery is limited to ratepayers around Carmel Valley.

And it can add to reserves through MPWMD’s aquifer storage and recovery project, but the district’s ability to do that is limited to when a certain flow threshold is met on the Carmel River, which is highly variable. In 2017, for example, the district banked about 2,400 acre-feet in this way, but it’s entirely dependent on rainfall – the past water year the district was only able to move 73 acre-feet into storage.

It’s also limited by infrastructure constraints like the diameter of the pipeline that climbs from Carmel Valley to the Seaside Basin, where the water is injected.

The point of that storage, MPWMD General Manager Dave Stoldt says, is to be like a reservoir for dry years, and not to be part of Cal Am’s supply portfolio.

“Cal Am is playing a very dangerous game right now,” Stoldt says. “The point of reserves is when you have bad weather. The point of reserves is not when you have a bad water company.”