Limiting water to justify desal?

Cal Am's refusal to sign the CPUC-approved Water Purchase Agreement (WPA) for the Pure Water Monterey Expansion is unreasonable and irresponsible. Its demand for more infrastructure money has already been reviewed by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and determined invalid. It appears Cal Am is purposely asking for funds that cannot be authorized as part of this project to stall the Pure Water Monterey Expansion further and shift blame for the delay to the CPUC.

Cal Am's refusal is not only blocking 2,250 acre-feet of urgently needed new water supply from the PWM Expansion. It's also limiting Aquifer Storage and Recovery production.

The ASR project was designed by the Water Management District to capture the current excess winter flows from the Carmel River and store them in the Seaside Basin. With the river running at unusually high levels this year, ASR has been storing water since Dec. 31 and will continue as long as the river runs above a certain cubic feet per second threshold. But ASR could be storing more if not for Cal Am's negligence.

There are four ASR injection wells. But Cal Am has been using two of them as extraction wells for Pure Water Monterey instead of building the needed extraction wells. Using the ASR wells for PWM extraction instead of ASR injection results in a lack of injection capacity which cuts ASR storage by close to half, wasting urgently needed water that is lost to the ocean.

The Pure Water Monterey Project has been operating for three years now with no dedicated extraction wells. The needed wells are part of the $61.6 million in infrastructure costs in the WPA that Cal Am refuses to sign.

The PWM Expansion is a public agency project, so Cal Am makes no profit on it or the water it produces. It will cost Monterey One Water about $65 million to build the Expansion.

Cal Am originally wanted

$81 million for infrastructure (wells, pipes, and pumps) to deliver the water from the PWM Expansion. The CPUC Office of Ratepayer Advocates and other parties said that was excessive, and the CPUC cut it down to about $40 million. Cal Am complained loudly and got another $20 million authorized. But now Cal Am claims that's not enough.

Cal Am has blocked and delayed the PWM Expansion for almost three years. Now it turns out that CPUC approval for the WPA was not even necessary. Cal Am has signed hundreds of water purchase agreements with no CPUC approval. Did Cal Am put this through a long and unnecessary process with no intention of signing as a delay tactic?

Cal Am is telling the public and our elected leaders it wants to see the Pure Water Monterey Expansion move forward quickly, but its actions prove the opposite. Without Cal Am's signature, financing cannot be obtained, the Expansion cannot be built and ASR will remain limited.

In its press statements, Cal Am says they must be compensated to build the PWM Expansion infrastructure, or they can't deliver the water. Yet, deceptively, they never mention the $61.6 million already approved in the WPA for PWM Expansion infrastructure.

Does Cal Am have any intention of signing the Water Purchase Agreement? It appears Cal Am intends to starve the Peninsula of water to make its case for desal. Governor Newsom's political pressure on the Coastal Commission was the only reason Cal Am's desal was conditionally approved. It still has to make its case to the CPUC and other agencies.

Cal Am has used the drought as its argument for desal. Now the rains have swollen the Carmel River. And because Cal Am never built the needed wells and continues to delay signing the WPA, MPWMD can't capture all the water the ASR project was designed to store.

Cal Am is a master of deception and delay. Will Cal Am's President, Kevin Tilden, ever sign the agreement to buy the water we so urgently need? Will the CPUC force Cal Am to sign? Meanwhile, Cal Am continues to hold our water hostage.