The water supply solution for the Monterey Peninsula might not be desalination.

As California American Water continues in its yearslong pursuit of a desalination project, a competing idea is starting to take shape: Scrapping desal altogether.

Whether or not that’s possible will become known in the coming months: On Aug. 7, a California Public Utilities Commission judge issued a ruling that lays out the remaining issues to be addressed in hearings about Cal Am’s project application.

Among them is the question of whether Pure Water Monterey, a recycled water project that will supply 3,500 acre-feet annually to the Peninsula starting in 2019, can be expanded.

Paul Sciuto is general manager of Monterey One Water, formerly the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency, which is constructing Pure Water’s treatment facility. He says there were already discussions in local water circles about whether desal is necessary, but that the CPUC ruling “accelerated” those discussions.

Underscoring those conversations is the relentless scrutiny Cal Am’s project faces: The CPUC’s Aug. 7 ruling pushed back the anticipated release of the project’s final environmental impact report another six months, to March 16, 2018, “due to the complexity and extensive number of comments” that were received about the draft environmental impact report.

Just hours after the CPUC ruling, the Marina Coast Water District board heard a presentation about the preliminary findings of a study they’d commissioned that mapped the region’s aquifers using airborne electromagnetics, deployed via helicopter. The study’s revelations confirmed there is an abundance of freshwater in the shallower aquifers around Cal Am’s test slant well, counter to conventional wisdom that there was more saltwater.

After that presentation, MCWD General Manager Keith Van der Maaten said, “There isn’t water you can pull into these slant wells from the groundwater basin without causing harm.”

Given the opposition Cal Am’s project faces in Marina, the potential for litigation is high. That would likely delay its construction for months, if not years, and could kill the project outright.

Considering those factors, officials like Sciuto are exploring another way forward—expanding Pure Water Monterey, which, if it can be pulled off, would likely be cheaper and provide the environmental benefit of preventing more polluted water from flowing into the bay.

Whether or not it’s feasible can be answered, in part, by looking at the numbers: In 2016, the water demand in the Cal Am service area was about 9,600 acre-feet.

In January 2022, the deadline the state gave Cal Am to stop its illegal pumping of the Carmel River, Cal Am’s supply portfolio comes out to about 9,000 acre-feet, just 600 acre-feet shy of 2016 demand.

Dave Stoldt, general manager of the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, played a key role in negotiating Pure Water Monterey. He is optimistic about its potential for expansion.

“If you believe, as I do, that the current path we’re on could lead to a lawsuit, I think we could pull it off,” he says, adding there will still be approximately 6,000-7,000 acre-feet of winter wastewater flowing out to the ocean when Pure Water goes online, and that there is potential to capture some of it. The challenge is ensuring the system’s capacity can still meet peak water demand and have enough water stored during dry years.

Sciuto says if an agreement can be made with Salinas Valley stakeholders to acquire rights to some of the excess winter flows, he thinks Pure Water may be able to provide up to 6,000 acre-feet of water to the Peninsula. That would put Cal Am’s future water supply at about 11,500 acre-feet. But questions remain.

“[Pure Water Monterey] is cost competitive,” Sciuto says, “it’s better for the environment [than desal], and I am confident that we can produce more water than we are currently contractually obligated to. But I do not know how much more.”