Seaside’s golf courses prepare to switch to well water as state mandates conservation.

It may have been April Fool’s Day, but California Gov. Jerry Brown – standing in a dry Sierra Nevada field that would, in a normal climate year, be feet deep with snow – wasn’t kidding when he issued the state’s first mandatory water restrictions April 1.

The overall goal is to cut 25 percent of urban water use from 2013 levels. The State Water Resources Control Board is expected to approve specific regulations May 5 for implementation in mid-May, according to SWRCB Senior Environmental Scientist Max Gomberg.

Dave Stoldt, general manager for Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, says the Peninsula will probably be given credit for the conservation it’s already achieved. The state’s monthly water-use reports consistently put Cal Am’s Monterey District among the top 10 residential districts using the least water per capita.

“I can pretty much guarantee Cal Am’s Monterey District is going to be required to reduce less than 25 percent,” Gomberg says.

But golf courses, which Stoldt says make up just 2 percent of the Monterey Peninsula’s water use, may face heavier scrutiny than households, which use 67 percent. Brown specifically called out heavily irrigated urban landscapes – golf courses, cemeteries and campuses – for their potential to cut potable water use.

“MONTEREY DISTRICT IS GOING TO REDUCE LESS THAN 25 PERCENT.”

Outside Cal Am’s territory, Seaside’s Bayonet and Black Horse golf courses are about to shift back to well water after five years using potable Salinas Valley Basin groundwater delivered by Marina Coast Water District.

The arrangement is part of a swap in which Seaside gave Marina Coast more than 21 acres of Fort Ord land in exchange for 2,500 acre-feet of potable water so it could ease the overdraft of the Seaside Basin.

According to Seaside City Engineer Tim O’Halloran, the city has already used about 2,300 acre-feet of that Marina Coast water since 2010. He expects the deal to expire around July, when Bayonet and Black Horse will revert back to irrigating with well water.

The two wells are adjacent to the golf courses and date back to when the Army owned the land before selling it to the city, O’Halloran says. The courts adjudicated the Seaside Basin in 2006, allocating 540 acre-feet per year for Bayonet and Black Horse irrigation.

When Seaside resumes tapping those wells, the city will recover about 450 acre-feet per year for use on new Ord Community developments – including, potentially, the proposed mixed-use development Monterey Downs.

Eventually, O’Halloran adds, the city plans to irrigate its golf courses with recycled water. The “purple pipe” is already laid under the greens, he says, ready to be connected with a recycled water source to be developed by Marina Coast or the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency.

They may need it: Gomberg says the state water board’s attorneys are working out restrictions for the roughly one-third of the state’s 866 golf courses using non-potable sources like well water. Although drinkable water is in shortest supply, he says, pumping non-potable well water puts pressure on groundwater sources already stressed by the drought.

“We’re going to have to figure out something different for them,” he says. “This is where the challenge of designing statewide systems is huge.”