City sues over the desal slant well plan
Taking aim at California American Water’s proposal to draw feeder water from the CEMEX sand mining plant for its planned desalination project, the city of Marina has sued the CEMEX owners and Cal Am.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Monterey County Superior Court, Marina asked the court to halt the proposal by invalidating an agreement between Cal Am and CEMEX to pump brackish water from the sand mining plant site for a desal plant and find Cal Am’s plan to pump a portion of Salinas Valley groundwater as part of the proposal to be a violation of the Monterey County Water Resources Agency Act.
Marina argues that the city already has a 1996 agreement with CEMEX to limit groundwater pumping on the site to no more than 500 acre-feet per year but that CEMEX subsequently reached a separate deal with Cal Am in 2018 to allow the pumping of about 17,300 acre-feet of water from the site. The second agreement, the lawsuit alleges, constitutes a breach of the first agreement, according to the lawsuit
In addition, the suit asks the court to rule that Cal Am’s plan to pump groundwater from the site as part of the company’s Monterey Peninsula desal project would violate the county Water Resources Agency Act’s prohibition against exporting any groundwater from the critically overdrafted Salinas Valley basin.
Cal Am’s desal project is designed to pump brackish water contaminated by seawater from the CEMEX site to a planned desal plant on Charlie Benson Road for treatment and production of a new water supply for the Peninsula to offset the Carmel River pumping cutback order set to take full effect on Dec. 31, 2021.
The city argues that the Cal Am pumping plans would “threaten to cause irreparable harm to Marina’s clean, affordable, and reliable groundwater resources, which provide 100% of the city’s drinking water.”
“Cal Am thinks it is above the law, but it is not,” Marina Mayor Bruce Delgado said. “Cal Am is not entitled to receive state and federal agency permits for a project that violates local agreements and state law. The issues addressed in this lawsuit are additional warning alarms to everyone that Cal Am’s project is infeasible and environmentally harmful.”
Delgado added the desal project is distracting from the pursuit of the “vastly superior” Pure Water Monterey expansion project, which he argued could supply enough water for Cal Am’s local customers through 2050.
In response, Cal Am spokeswoman Catherine Stedman said Marina and the Marina Coast Water District have “made the same arguments in so many venues, each time having them rejected by a judge or by the technical experts upon which regulatory agencies rely” and called the litigation a “waste of taxpayer and ratepayer money.”
Stedman noted the nine lawsuits filed by Marina, Marina Coast and others challenging the desal project, including the slant well plan, all lost or were dismissed, with two more pending.
Cal Am’s desal project is currently awaiting delayed Coastal Commission review, with the commission now expected to consider the project in August, while the Pure Water Monterey expansion proposal hit a roadblock recently when the Monterey One Water board declined to certify a supplemental environmental impact report even as the core recycled water project encounters operational issues in the wake of delays in project completion.