The water level at Lake San Antonio, one of the South County reservoirs that supplies Salinas Valley farms, is so low, sunken trash is exposed on the banks and some boat launches hang over dry ground. At the same time, San Luis Obispo County is planning to finally cash in on its full water rights on the neighboring reservoir, Lake Nacimiento, which is also more dry than wet.
SLO County’s allotment amounts to 17,500 acre-feet per year, only 5 percent of Nacimiento’s capacity. It is currently using about a third of that.
“We are looking at how to more fully utilize all of our water rights, sooner rather than later,” says SLO Public Works Director Paavo Ogren. “We don’t have storage rights in Lake Nacimiento, so every year it’s use it or lose it.”
As of May 8, Nacimiento is at 21 percent of its 377,900-acre-foot capacity and San Antonio is at 4 percent.
Robert Johnson, assistant general manager for Monterey County Water Resources Agency, says SLO’s increased water draw won’t be a problem for Salinas Valley farmers. “The point is, SLO has an allotment and they are entitled to take it,” he says. “There may be a perceived impact, but that water is not part of the calculations for moving water in Monterey County.”
SLO’s entitlement traces back to the 1950s and 1960s, when MCWRA’s predecessor, Monterey County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, built Lake Nacimiento and then Lake San Antonio. One major purpose was to allow for summer water releases to recharge the Salinas Valley groundwater basin.
“SAN LUIS OBISPO HAS AN ALLOTMENT, AND THEY ARE ENTITLED TO TAKE IT.”
But Lake Nacimiento sits on the SLO side of the county line, a fact SLO officials didn’t overlook. A lawsuit resulted in an agreement in which SLO County helped pay for reservoir construction and got a share of the water.
SLO County has historically used about 1,750 acre-feet of its allotment for properties around the lake, Ogren says. But in 2011, the county completed a 45-mile pipeline called the Nacimiento Water Project, delivering up to 9,630 additional acre-feet per year to subscribers including Atascadero, Paso Robles and the city of San Luis Obispo.
That leaves 6,120 more acre-feet for SLO County to contract out, and Ogren says his agency is in discussions with participating agencies to tap it. A proposed pipeline expansion project would supply Morro Bay and government facilities along Highway 1, including a state prison.
Under the two counties’ arrangement, Monterey County can take whatever Nacimiento water allotment SLO doesn’t use. Johnson says that’s only happened twice: during the severe droughts of 1976-77 and 1989-91. “It’s like when you do your checking account and you leave $200 in there but you call it zero, so you always have a buffer,” he says.
Today’s extreme drought conditions could be reason to reconsider that buffer, which disappears if SLO County uses its full Nacimiento allotment.
But Norm Groot, executive director of Monterey County Farm Bureau, says Salinas Valley farmers aren’t concerned. “[SLO County] is just claiming the water rights they already had,” he says. “There’s no legal or jurisdictional issue there.”