Politics, law and reality collide in pursuit of relief on Peninsula water woes.

Say you want to install a new water meter on the Monterey Peninsula – no can do. Since 1995, the region’s water utility, California American Water, has been under a cease-and-desist order from the State Water Resources Control Board to stop illegally overpumping the Carmel River. That order led to a ban in 2009 on new water meters, making it difficult to impossible to build needed housing since then.

In this mess, some real water supply projects have advanced, chiefly a recycled water project called Pure Water Monterey. It means Cal Am is within its legal pumping limit – yet the cease-and-desist order is still in effect.

Everything in local water is a proxy for something else, and in this mess of public agencies and projects, one recurring storyline is that Cal Am is a villain – in some tellings, it is a hero thwarted in its efforts to develop an alternate water supply.

What people think about that alternate water supply, specifically a desalination plant, often tells you how they perceive Cal Am. The company continues to pursue a pricey, controversial desalination plant, even though lower-cost recycled water has so far shown enough promise to justify lifting the cease-and-desist order. The Monterey Peninsula Water Management District – an antagonist to Cal Am in the storyline, with current efforts including a public takeover of the private company – has asked the State Water Board to lift the cease-and-desist order.

Some cities are joining in, including Monterey City Council, which voted 4-1 on Nov. 18 to send a letter to the State Water Board urging them to lift the 30-year-old order.

The city’s community development director, Kim Cole, suggested council include a reference to the desal project, which she assured them “is going to construction fairly soon.” Council opted instead to send a letter without that phrasing.

All of this is water politics, more than water supply analysis. As I reported last year, Erik Ekdahl, deputy director for the state board’s Division of Water Rights, says, “I don’t have an exact number. It’s not just a clear, bright line.”

In Cal Am’s assessment, only a desalination plant – the biggest project with the highest-cost water – is a viable path forward. A growing chorus of other voices say there is plenty of water with innovations like recycling, and the sourcewater is secure. (“The likelihood the ag industry is going to start building their own plant is very low,” Monterey Mayor Tyller Williamson said. “Aliens could also come to Earth.”)

“Aliens could also come to Earth.”

As the politics of water play out in council chambers and board rooms, a long-awaited legal battle is getting detailed treatment in Monterey County Superior Court, where Judge Thomas Wills is presiding over a trial that attempts to answer a major legal question underlying the hero/villain story: Does Cal Am have a right to the water in Marina where it intends to build a desalination plant?

In 2020, the City of Marina and Marina Coast Water District sued Cal Am, the sand mining company Cemex that granted an easement to Cal Am for its desalination plant, and the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, arguing that it does not. “Cal Am lacks any right to extract groundwater for the project at the Cemex property or to export this groundwater to users located outside of the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin,” according to the city’s suit.

In the ongoing trial, a small army of attorneys are talking about water and whose hydrological analysis is to be believed. The story about protagonist and antagonist keeps inserting itself into the courtroom, but Judge Thomas Wills keeps trying to keep it out. An attorney for Marina Coast called George Riley, a member of the board of MPWMD and founder of the group that became Public Water Now, to the stand to talk about the cost of water.

Wills was skeptical. “The purpose of this trial is not a straw poll to find out how many people are for or against the plan,” he said. “The question is whether it is unreasonable or reasonable.”

There seems to be little progress on answering that in city halls, where the political arc of the story depends on who is telling it. It seems equally unlikely that the answer will come from a courtroom, where zero hydrologists are employed. Until the state water board weighs in, a divisive narrative persists.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com