Small water systems across Monterey County are bracing for the inevitable next drought.

As a volunteer, Victor Lurz helps run the water system for his community of 96 households off River Road in the Salinas Valley. The community relies on a well that draws groundwater from hundreds of feet below the surface.

“The water we are using has been the same since the 1940s,” he says. “Occasionally we have had testing on the depth of the well and how fast it recharges. We have numbers from back to the 1950s. They have been consistent since then.” Even during the drought a few years ago, there was ample water in the well.

Lurz’s confidence might be somewhat surprising considering that his system, the Pedrazzi Mutual Water Company, was recently rated by the California Department of Water Resources as one of the most vulnerable small residential water systems in Monterey County.

In March, the state agency released a nearly completed draft report on the risk of water shortage in rural areas and the drought vulnerability of small systems.

“There is concern that almost every county in the state is at risk of water issues due to drought,” says Arthur Hinojosa, the chief of the Division of Regional Assistance at DWR. “Most of the state is urban and their risk is much less, but that’s why this report was created. When we had the last drought, we saw rural communities having issues.”

About a million Californians depend on small systems for their drinking water. (The new report doesn’t include the many others who operate private wells and also face difficult drought scenarios.)

Even though Lurz and his community have never felt a pinch for water, they are still considered high risk because of a number of complicated factors. Some are outside of the community’s control: The well draws from the intensively farmed Salinas Valley Basin, which the state has declared critically overdrafted. But other risks are linked to how Lurz and the other volunteers run the system. The usage by each household, for example, is not metered.

“We don’t have meters,” Lurz says, acknowledging the potential for wastefulness. “We just count on everybody to do their share.”

Across the state, Monterey County is among the most vulnerable counties, with one of the largest numbers of highly impacted rural communities, according to the report. Also, the county’s small water systems are on average the 13th most vulnerable out of those of 58 counties.

The Weekly reached out to a number of small water suppliers in addition to the Pedrazzi system, revealing a range of responses. Everyone was aware of the challenge posed by drought even if not all knew about the new state report.

At Springfield Water Company, for example, which serves Royal Oaks and has been rated as one of the most at-risk systems in the state, they are in the process of switching to a new well.

Another water system operator in North County, near Aromas, didn’t know about the new report but is concerned about the problem: “There have got to be hundreds of us in the area with small water systems. If we have a drought, we are going to have a whole bunch in a whole world of hurt.”