Salinas Valley groundwater agency advances a plan to stop seawater intrusion.

Fourteen years move fast when it comes to reaching sustainability in Monterey County’s critically overdrafted aquifers; the 2040 deadline has pushed three project portfolios into the spotlight.

Despite concerns about the feasibility, scale and structure of the proposals, the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency’s board of directors voted 9-2 on Aug. 13 to move forward with one.

The selected suite of projects, known as Portfolio 3A, includes the creation of a small Brackish Groundwater Restoration Project (BGRP) with partial delivery to Salinas and partial injection; Salinas River recharge in Castroville and the Eastside subbasins; optimization of the Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project; and 10-percent demand management, or cutbacks in pumping. The portfolio has an estimated capital cost of more than $1 billion, with annual operating expenses of $74 million.

“It’s important for us to be completely honest about budget and about some of the concerns moving forward and our ability to pivot if you have to,” Ryan Kelly of Boutonnet Farms, who represents agricultural interests on the board, said at the meeting.

While California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act mandates different deadlines for sustainability in individual subbasins, SVBGSA staff view groundwater management as an integrated approach that will involve a strategy spanning all subbasins.

The decision moves Portfolio 3A forward as a “preferred implementation pathway,” meaning the projects will remain flexible as staff works to revise a draft response letter to the State Department of Water Resources. The revised letter will be reviewed at a board meeting sometime mid-September before being submitted to DWR.

Although Portfolio 3A does not meet the minimum threshold on slowing seawater intrusion, it comes close, according to officials, and is $240 million less expensive than the project that does meet the threshold.

The SVBGSA Advisory Committee has emphasized that the portfolio with a large BGRP, seen as the most effective option, is too expensive and too uncertain. While committee members have been unable to agree on a single portfolio of projects, they agree that other projects need further evaluation.

“We will continue refining the projects,” SVBGSA General Manager Piret Harmon said. “We need to make progress. We will have trade-offs between what makes more sense, but we also need to keep moving forward.”